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Garden path sentence

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Re: Garden path sentence

#51

Post by Xophmeister »

logingone wrote: post #41
Xophmeister wrote: post #24

A similar phenomenon, at least in English, is that you can (technically) infinitely embed subclauses without using complementisers ("that", "who" and "which"). So you get unparsable things like: The dog the cat the mouse feared loathed barked. ...punctuated and complementised makes it slightly better: The dog, who the cat, who the mouse feared, loathed, barked. ...unwound makes it readable, but changes the semantics…

you can ... So you get unparsable things... If it's not parseable, then surely you can't.

I meant "unparsable" in the same sense as garden path sentences are unparsable; in that, they are parsable, but you'll probably have to give it a few tries before you get it.

Re: Garden path sentence

#52

Post by jclem »

Jabbles wrote: post #26
Xophmeister wrote: post #24

A similar phenomenon, at least in English, is that you can (technically) infinitely embed subclauses without using complementisers ("that", "who" and "which"). So you get unparsable things like: The dog the cat the mouse feared loathed barked. ...punctuated and complementised makes it slightly better: The dog, who the cat, who the mouse feared, loathed, barked. ...unwound makes it readable, but changes the semantics…

You can't "technically" do that. Which "rule" (from which rulebook) do you think allows you to arbitrarily repeat structures?

This is called center embedding, and it's actually the subject of quite a lot of research. Some of this research has led to a distinction between grammatical (which a sentence like "The cat the rat the dog bit chased escaped" may be) and acceptable (which such a sentence is not). Other research has deemed it agrammatical and unacceptable.

Here's a helpful presentation summarizing some of this research: https://depts.washington.edu/lingconf/slides/Bader&Haeussler...

The sentence the comment the user replied to included parsed with difficulty.

Re: Garden path sentence

#53

Post by jloughry »

function_seven wrote: post #3
dandare wrote: post #2

As a non native speaker I struggled greatly until I learned that this is a thing in English language.

Ha, yup. I think a good corollary is prefix vs. infix notation in programing languages. With prefix (or RPN) notation, it's impossible to be led down the garden path. The rules are simple and unambiguous. For example, 4+5×3 is a garden path, where reading left-to-right you may think to yourself, "four plus five is nine, then nine times... wait, I have to backtrack and handle five times three first..." Whereas + 4 × 5…

And this sentence:

    The girl the boy the dog hit bit cried.
measures the depth of the stack in human brains.

Re: Garden path sentence

#54

Post by Someone »

berkes wrote: post #16

The sidebar shows two other languages for this Lemma, the Dutch one is interesting: * Intuinzinnen , From the Dutch proverbs "ergens intuinen" of "om de tuin geleid worden". Literally: To "be gardened into something", or "to be led around the garden." Both meaning the same as "lead someone down the garden path" Seams the proverb is nearly similar in both languages. Which makes me wonder whether they originated from t…

No. 'tuin' etymologically is 'town'. Both originally described an enclosure (around a piece of ground). From there, it became the piece of ground within in both languages (http://www.etymonline.com/index.php?term=town)

Garden is from French (jardin)

Back to the proverb: the dutch one seems to be about "keeping someone from that what is important/the truth" by not letting them in.

Re: Garden path sentence

#55

Post by zodiac »

Jabbles wrote: post #26
Xophmeister wrote: post #24

A similar phenomenon, at least in English, is that you can (technically) infinitely embed subclauses without using complementisers ("that", "who" and "which"). So you get unparsable things like: The dog the cat the mouse feared loathed barked. ...punctuated and complementised makes it slightly better: The dog, who the cat, who the mouse feared, loathed, barked. ...unwound makes it readable, but changes the semantics…

You can't "technically" do that. Which "rule" (from which rulebook) do you think allows you to arbitrarily repeat structures?

Well, you can go from

"The cat meowed"

to

"The cat the mouse feared meowed"

If your claim is that nesting to arbitrary depths is not allowed, what is the maximum depth that is "legal"?

Re: Garden path sentence

#56

Post by zodiac »

Tomte wrote: post #11

I think in real-world situations speakers would prefer "fruit flies like bananas", which may also be a garden path sentence, but its resolution seems much easier to me. Do native speakers concur? Is there any research whether speakers do prefer utterances like my example in practice due to this property?

In real-world situations the stress falls on different words depending on which parse of "fruit flies like a banana" you are adopting

Re: Garden path sentence

#57

Post by TazeTSchnitzel »

jjnoakes wrote: post #49
TazeTSchnitzel wrote: post #38

Earlier quoted context omitted.

RPN does have the advantage that it's unambiguous, yes, but if you miss a token you will end up confused.

Won't you be confused if you miss a token in a non-RPN parse?

Yes, but the difference is less drastic.

Re: Garden path sentence

#58

Post by colanderman »

Xophmeister wrote: post #24

A similar phenomenon, at least in English, is that you can (technically) infinitely embed subclauses without using complementisers ("that", "who" and "which"). So you get unparsable things like: The dog the cat the mouse feared loathed barked. ...punctuated and complementised makes it slightly better: The dog, who the cat, who the mouse feared, loathed, barked. ...unwound makes it readable, but changes the semantics…

    The dog, who was loathed by the cat whom the mouse feared, barked.
Unwound and same meaning as your first and second sentences.

Or even simpler:

    The dog, who was loathed by the cat who was feared by the rat, barked.
Come to think of it, this reminds me somewhat of tail-recursion optimization.

Re: Garden path sentence

#59

Post by feintruled »

uououuttt wrote: post #43
Swizec wrote: post #27

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I could swear you've posted this exact comment before. Or is it a meme by now? Google finds four results of this phrase: http://williamedwardscoder.tumblr.com/post/13292744100/the-s... https://www.reddit.com/r/programming/comments/sgght/comparin... ? https://www.reddit.com/comments/108q4b/markov_chain_poem_tra... http://encode.ru/threads/2225-A-jackhammer-it-doesn%E2%80%99... But it turns out all of those are you. Do…

Whoa, did you realize that you commented on it 3 years ago in that second reddit link? Anyway, no harm in sharing willvarfar. First time I've seen your comment!

But this is wonderful! In the context of the discussion..

The guy who had told the story before who had told the guy who had told the story before had forgotten had forgotten.

Re: Garden path sentence

#60

Post by chris_st »

Xophmeister wrote: post #29
Jabbles wrote: post #26

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You can't "technically" do that. Which "rule" (from which rulebook) do you think allows you to arbitrarily repeat structures?

There's no rulebook when it comes to syntax (grammar), unless you're a prescriptivist. There is plenty of precedent for embedding subclauses (e.g., "Here is a sentence, that I just made up, which has an embedded subclause."), but -- beyond anecdotal data -- there is no hard cut-off point to how many times you are permitted to embed. Empirically, most people don't like more than one level, but plenty of people allow i…

> There's no rulebook when it comes to syntax (grammar), unless you're a prescriptivist.

And no two prescriptivists can agree on which rulebook to use!

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