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Garden path sentence

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Re: Garden path sentence

#71

Post by xigency »

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?

Probably neither the Chicago manual of style nor my Sunday school grammar book would condone such writing.

Re: Garden path sentence

#72

Post by morgante »

canjobear wrote: post #70
morgante wrote: post #46

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> At what point does it become "incorrect"? When it becomes unintelligible to most native speakers? Beyond 1 level of nesting. There's no rule allowing arbitrary nesting, nor do people commonly nest beyond 1 level. I'm not sure where you saw hostility in my comment.

There's empirical work on this [1] (alas, paywalled): multiple center embedding in speech is rare but exists. It is more common in writing. There are examples of 2 levels of center-embedding which are clearly grammatical and not hard to understand: > Anyone [who saw the woman [who committed the crime] at any point] should be questioned. Others are very hard to understand: > Anyone [who the man [who the woman shot] ki…

Thanks for sharing the research, it's fascinating that there has actually been serious investigation of this.

That being said, I still think the rule of 1 level still makes sense (not that all 1 level embeds are valid or easy, but that all embeds beyond 1 level are invalid).

> Anyone [who saw [the woman who committed the crime] at any point] should be questioned.

That sentence has two complementisers, which the OP's sentence specifically did not. Introducing complementisers completely changes the rules and I think makes embedding much more possible.

Re: Garden path sentence

#73

Post by [deleted] »

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…

[deleted]

Re: Garden path sentence

#74

Post by [deleted] »

jclem wrote: post #52
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?

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.…

[deleted]

Re: Garden path sentence

#75

Post by [deleted] »

Tenhundfeld wrote: post #36
morgante wrote: post #31

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If you're arguing over technicalities, you are inherently adopting a prescriptivist approach. There are two possible approaches to your sentence and neither renders it grammatically correct. A prescriptivist would dismiss it as not being allowed by any rules while a descriptivist would point out that it defies both common usage and intelligibility.

I disagree, and FWIW, I find your tone hostile. A prescriptivist would say it follows allowed grammar rules but is still unintelligible. A descriptivist would say it follows common usage patterns but takes it to such an extreme as to be unintelligible. You see this pattern more often with proper names: - That's the house Jack built. - That's the woman the house Jack built fell on. - That's the lawyer the woman the ho…

[deleted]

Re: Garden path sentence

#76

Post by hcrisp »

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…

Another example which I have heard is:

  Throw the cow over the fence some hay.
It also reminds me of the sentence that wins the award for ending in the most prepositions:

  What did you bring that book that I didn't want to be read to out of up for?

Re: Garden path sentence

#77

Post by function_seven »

jloughry wrote: post #53
function_seven wrote: post #3

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Yeah, it exceeded my own stack :). Is it, "The boy hit the dog, the dog then bit the girl, who then cried?"

Some of those verbs are binary operators (transitive), others are unary (intransitive).

Re: Garden path sentence

#78

Post by XaspR8d »

hcrisp wrote: post #76
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…

Another example which I have heard is: Throw the cow over the fence some hay. It also reminds me of the sentence that wins the award for ending in the most prepositions: What did you bring that book that I didn't want to be read to out of up for?

I love that example! But I don't think it won any awards, because it's fairly easy to extend.

> What did you take the car driving the man who brought the book that I didn't want to be read to out of up away in for?

Almost-untangled form:

> For what reason did you take in the car driven away by the man who brought up the book that I did not want anyone to read words out of [the book] to me?

Although if you are being very specific, I think some syntacticians might treat the "out" in "out of" and the "up" in "bring up" as a different word classes than normal prepositions (the "out" is modifying another preposition's direction, and the "up" is a particle in a phrasal verb [1]). And I think that's one of the reasons the original form is so compelling is that you have some variance in form giving you clues -- the directional modifier, the question-inversion/wh-fronting, the salience of "bring up" -- that make it tantalizingly close to natural. Whereas mine just becomes a churn of words, at least in my reading.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Phrasal_verb#Examples_of_Phras... (see the notes on distinguishing between particle & prepositional phrasals)

Re: Garden path sentence

#79

Post by Swizec »

willvarfar wrote: post #32
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…

Yeap, all me. Its one of my fondest recollections of early programming. :) So sorry it offends you.

You misunderstand. It doesn't offend me. It is a delightful incident.

herbaceous border disputes has become one of my favourite stories about markov chains. It's part of internet lore for me :)

Re: Garden path sentence

#80

Post by lfam »

oneeyedpigeon wrote: post #21

I find it interesting that we have solid grammatical fixes for this problem in some cases, but not all. For example, The horse raced past the barn fell should never be written like that. The fix is: The horse, raced past the barn, fell But: The old man the boat really can't be fixed, other than rearranging the sentence altogether.

> The old man the boat

When spoken aloud, this is easier to understand. A fluent English speaker will be able to put the emphasis in the proper places.

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