Garden path sentence

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A garden path sentence is a sentence for which the responder's most intuitive interpretation is an incorrect one, ultimately luring them into an improper parse. Garden path sentences are used in psycholinguistics to illustrate that, while reading, human beings process language one word at a time. The "garden path" is a reference to the saying "to be led up the garden path", meaning "to be misled".

As a person reads a garden path sentence, they establish a meaning structure one word at a time. At some point, it becomes clear to the responder that they have been building an incorrect structure; the next word or phrase does not agree with the path the responder has been led down. Garden path sentences are rare in spoken communication, because the prosodic qualities of speech (such as the stress) and the tone of voice serve to remedy ambiguities encountered in text.

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[edit] Examples

An illustrative example of a garden path sentence:

  • The horse raced past the barn fell.
    The reader usually starts to parse this as an ordinary active intransitive sentence, but stumbles when reaching the word "fell." At this point, the reader is forced to backtrack and look for other possible structures. It may take some rereading to realize that "raced past the barn" is in fact a reduced relative clause with a passive participle, implying that "fell" is the main verb. The correct reading is then: "The horse (that was) raced past the barn fell."
    This sentence can be parsed in other ways as well: A British reader accustomed to "fell" being a noun (meaning "mountain") may reach the end and still treat "raced" as the verb and "barn fell" as "the fell by or at the barn".
    The example hinges on the ambiguity of the lexical category of the word "raced": it can be either a past-tense verb or a passive participle.

Compare to an unambiguous sentence with the same syntactic structure:

  • The car driven past the barn crashed.
    Unlike "raced," the verb "driven" is unambiguously passive, thus eliminating the garden path reading.

Other examples of garden path sentences are:

Sentence Initial likely partial parse Final parse
The old man the boat. The man who is old does something. The boat is manned by the old people.
The man whistling tunes pianos. The man who is whistling musical songs does something. The man who is whistling also tunes pianos.
The cotton clothing is made of grows in Mississippi. The clothing (made of cotton) is made of some fabric The cotton, of which clothing is made, is grown in Mississippi.
The complex houses married and single soldiers and their families. The complicated (buildings? families?) got married to some people. Soldiers (both married and single), and their families, are housed in the complex.
The author wrote the novel was likely to be a best-seller. The author that wrote the novel ... The author wrote that the novel was likely to be a best-seller.
The tomcat curled up on the cushion seemed friendly. The tomcat curled up(past-tense verb) on the cushion... The tomcat that was in a curled up position on the cushion seemed friendly.
The man returned to his house was happy. The man returned to his house... The man who was returned to his house was happy.
The government plans to raise taxes were defeated. The government plans(present-tense verb) to raise taxes. The plans (plural noun) of the government to raise taxes were defeated.
The farmer threw the cow over the fence some hay. The farmer threw the cow over the fence... The farmer threw some hay to the cow that was over the fence.

[edit] Jokes

A number of jokes depend on the garden path effect, often combined with more usual syntactic ambiguity. For instance, "Time flies like an arrow. Fruit flies like a banana." The first sentence starts the listener firmly down the garden path, priming for a particular parsing of the second sentence which would parallel the first. The joke hinges on the ambiguities of "fruit" (independent noun or modifier of "flies"), "flies" (singular verb or plural noun), and "like" (preposition or plural verb). Unlike the above-cited sentences, however, the expected reading of the second sentence ("Fruit typically flies through the air the same way bananas do") is grammatically possible, though. The old Vaudevillian joke often quoted by e e cummings, "Would you hit a woman with a baby? No I'd hit her with a brick," uses the same effect.

Another example of this is "What has four wheels and flies?". The answer, "a garbage truck", makes little sense until one realizes that "flies" is a noun referring to the insect rather than a verb indicating what the garbage truck does. "What has flies and four wheels?" resolves the ambiguity, but ruins the joke. A similar joke was used in The Simpsons episode "Sweet Seymour Skinner's Baadasssss Song". When Bart Simpson poses the question "What has four legs and ticks?" to his classmates, their response is "a walking clock" because they understand this usage of "ticks" to be the verb when, in fact, Bart is using the plural of the noun tick (with which his dog is infested).

[edit] See also

[edit] External links

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