A garden-path sentence in the wild?
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From François Lang:
This headline (WP [11/1/24]) completely garden-pathed me–especially because of "watch strikes"!
I've rarely encountered a garden-path sentence in the wild, i.e., not in the context of a linguistic discussion of garden-path sentences.
"On Baalbek’s edges, the displaced watch strikes rain down on their city"
Garden-path sentences and crash-blossom headlines are both botanical metaphors in service to linguistics. This makes me wonder how we should distinguish them and what makes them particularly appropriate to such applications.
Another question that arises in my mind pertaining to this type of ambiguous or incorrect usage is whether some languages are more prone to them than others. This possibility was alluded to in the second item under "Selected readings" below.
Selected readings
- "Up or down the garden path?" (7/28/19)
- "Garden paths galore" (1/22/24)
Frans said,
November 3, 2024 @ 1:38 am
Easily avoided by adding an "as".
Philip Taylor said,
November 3, 2024 @ 5:29 am
Your one certainly threw me, Victor, but so did this one from today's Economist "1843 magazine" — "In this tumult, the dream of a successful social-media platform that prized free speech and didn’t make people feel like eyeballs was lost". It took me several minutes to realise that "didn’t make people feel like eyeballs was lost" was not the concluding clause.
Gregory Kusnick said,
November 3, 2024 @ 10:57 am
In trying to avoid the obvious garden path, I wandered down another one: for a moment I imagined that guards who stand watch at the city's edges were on strike.
John from Cincinnati said,
November 3, 2024 @ 11:34 am
Re: @Philip Taylor
I can't parse the quote at all. Please, anyone, give me a clue.
r-bryan said,
November 3, 2024 @ 12:23 pm
…the dream … was lost.
Jonathan Smith said,
November 3, 2024 @ 2:55 pm
*"the dream of a mainstream platform that prized free speech and treated users as more than eyeballs was lost"
J. L. said,
November 3, 2024 @ 7:13 pm
Unusually for a garden path sentence, the false parse almost makes sense. I was prepared to accept "strikes X down on" as a phrasal verb similar to "the military rains bombs down on…"–then I'd just need the quite sci-fi but perfectly grammatical idea of a sentient (wrist)watch with rain-controlling powers and 'they' pronouns.
Philip Taylor said,
November 4, 2024 @ 3:37 am
John-f-C : "In this tumult, the dream (of a successful social-media platform that (prized free speech) and (didn’t make people feel like eyeballs)) was lost".
Yves Rehbein said,
November 4, 2024 @ 6:03 am
@Frans, that helps, but the line-break, the fact that I don't recognize "the displaced" as a set phrase while I am reading this out of context and Baalbek might be a Lebanese restaurant and I hadn't had coffee, leads me to assume that it should be "are watching" as "while" would require, but "as" does not.
This is a nice parallel to the previous posting 文明如厕 "Be civilized when you go to the toilet" (VHM 11/1/24) where "when" is a helpful interpolation not warranted by the surface form. I was this close to commenting that there is no grammar to speak of.
So I second the question from the other linked thread
> … it makes me wonder if CC/LS is prone to this sort of ambiguity because of the inexplicitness of its grammar. [VHM 1/22/24]
The irony is that rú 如 translates both "as" as well as "go", though not exactly "when". This is giving me the irie feeling that, well, I just don't know Chinese.
Francisco said,
November 4, 2024 @ 8:24 am
I imagine that a displaced person that sees their city under bombardment will parse that headline instantaneously. A war correspondent embedded in the scene may also fail to see the ambiguity.
I venture to suggest that synthetic languages ought to be less prone to garden-pathing.
Philip Anderson said,
November 6, 2024 @ 7:25 pm
Reading in The Times yesterday “BMW profits fall 80% as Chinese demand crashes” made we wonder why anyone should be demanding crashes?
stuartamble said,
November 10, 2024 @ 5:26 am
The BBC has this medical-miracle garden path sentence in its recent news:
Mowbray eyes return after bowel cancer diagnosis