{"id":34514,"date":"2017-09-15T12:42:06","date_gmt":"2017-09-15T17:42:06","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/languagelog.ldc.upenn.edu\/nll\/?p=34514"},"modified":"2018-03-06T20:48:01","modified_gmt":"2018-03-07T01:48:01","slug":"belfast-noun-pile-headline-head-scratcher","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/languagelog.ldc.upenn.edu\/nll\/?p=34514","title":{"rendered":"Belfast noun pile headline head-scratcher"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>This head-scratcher of a headline from the <a href=\"http:\/\/www.belfasttelegraph.co.uk\/news\/northern-ireland\/ed-murray-sex-abuse-claim-us-mayors-time-in-northern-ireland-should-be-probed-36130468.html\">Belfast Telegraph<\/a>\u00a0was brought to our attention by Mike Pope: \"Ed Murray: Sex abuse claim US mayor's time in Northern Ireland 'should be probed'\".<\/p>\n<p align=\"center\"><a href=\"http:\/\/www.belfasttelegraph.co.uk\/news\/northern-ireland\/ed-murray-sex-abuse-claim-us-mayors-time-in-northern-ireland-should-be-probed-36130468.html\"><img decoding=\"async\" title=\"Click to embiggen\" src=\"http:\/\/languagelog.ldc.upenn.edu\/~bgzimmer\/usmayor.png\" alt=\"\" width=\"450\" \/><\/a><!--more--><\/p>\n<p>Ed Murray, <a href=\"http:\/\/www.belfasttelegraph.co.uk\/news\/northern-ireland\/ed-murray-sex-abuse-claim-us-mayors-time-in-northern-ireland-should-be-probed-36130468.html\">the article explains<\/a>, recently resigned as the mayor of Seattle under a cloud of allegations of sexual abuse. Amnesty International has asked for a police investigation into Murray's time in Northern Ireland (he worked on a peace project in Belfast in the '70s) to see if there are any further allegations.<\/p>\n<p>The headline is remarkably opaque, especially for those not familiar with the details of the Murray case. First, \"Ed Murray\" followed by a colon might suggest that Murray is the source of the information in the headline rather than the topic of it. Then we get the noun pile \"Sex abuse claim US mayor\", which is supposed to be understood as \"US mayor tied to sex abuse claim\". As if that wasn't bad enough, the noun pile is then put in a possessive construction with the <em>'s<\/em> clitic, upping the opacity even more.<\/p>\n<p>The noun pile here surely rivals some of the <a href=\"http:\/\/languagelog.ldc.upenn.edu\/nll\/index.php?s=%22noun+pile%22\">other specimens<\/a> we've examined from the British and Irish news media. It also continues the running theme of baffling \"sex\" headlines, such as \"<a href=\"http:\/\/languagelog.ldc.upenn.edu\/nll\/?p=29803\">Corpse sex kill threat prisoner gets 45 year sentence<\/a>\", \"<a href=\"http:\/\/languagelog.ldc.upenn.edu\/nll\/?p=4418\">China Ferrari sex orgy death crash<\/a>\", and \"<a href=\"http:\/\/languagelog.ldc.upenn.edu\/nll\/?p=16316\">Blindfold sex knife attack ex-wife jailed for murder attempt<\/a>\".<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>This head-scratcher of a headline from the Belfast Telegraph\u00a0was brought to our attention by Mike Pope: \"Ed Murray: Sex abuse claim US mayor's time in Northern Ireland 'should be probed'\".<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":8,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_exactmetrics_skip_tracking":false,"_exactmetrics_sitenote_active":false,"_exactmetrics_sitenote_note":"","_exactmetrics_sitenote_category":0,"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[277,26],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-34514","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-headlinese","category-language-and-the-media"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/languagelog.ldc.upenn.edu\/nll\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/34514","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/languagelog.ldc.upenn.edu\/nll\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/languagelog.ldc.upenn.edu\/nll\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/languagelog.ldc.upenn.edu\/nll\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/8"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/languagelog.ldc.upenn.edu\/nll\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=34514"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"https:\/\/languagelog.ldc.upenn.edu\/nll\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/34514\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":34518,"href":"https:\/\/languagelog.ldc.upenn.edu\/nll\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/34514\/revisions\/34518"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/languagelog.ldc.upenn.edu\/nll\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=34514"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/languagelog.ldc.upenn.edu\/nll\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=34514"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/languagelog.ldc.upenn.edu\/nll\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=34514"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}