“The horse raced past the barn fell” is an example of a garden path sentence, whose meaning can be more clearly described when phrased as “the horse which was raced past the barn fell”.
A garden-path sentence is a grammatically correct sentence that starts in such a way that a reader's most likely interpretation will be incorrect; the reader is lured into a parse that turns out to be a dead end or yields a clearly unintended meaning.
Notice that there are two types of ambiguous sentence: either there is a local ambiguity (one that is cleared up once you have heard the whole sentence) or it is a global ambiguity (one that remains even after the entire sentence has been heard). Garden Path sentences normally have local ambiguity.
What two things does the existence of garden path sentences tell us about the way humans process sentences? A garden path sentence is temporarily ambiguous sentence. Leads the analyzer 'down the garden path'. Initially everything fits the standard pattern, but doesn't by the end.
a sentence in which structural cues, lexical ambiguity, or a combination of both mislead the reader or listener into an incorrect interpretation until a disambiguating cue appears later in the sentence.
to deceiveDefinition of lead (someone) down/up the garden path : to deceive (someone) : to cause (someone) to go, think, or proceed wrongly He believes the average consumer is being led down the garden path by the promises in advertisements.
“'Garden-path sentences' are so-called because as we listen (or read) them, we are actively interpreting the sentence word-by-word, and building an interpretation by considering each word as it arrives,” says Ailis Cournane, Professor of Linguistics at New York University.
An example of ambiguity in a sentence is the chicken is ready to eat. There are two meanings, the first one is that the chicken is already cooked and people are going to eat that chicken, the other meaning is a chicken is going to eat.
A globally ambiguous sentence is one that has at least two distinct interpretations. In this type of ambiguity, after one has read or heard the entire sentence, the ambiguity is still present.
The garden-path model is a two-stage model in which the simplest syntactic structure is selected at the first stage using the principles of minimal attachment and late closure. Semantic processing occurs only during the second stage.
The Garden path model proposed by Frazier and Rayner (1982), argues readers only consider initially one syntactic structure for any given sentence and meaning is not involved in the selection of preliminary syntactical meaning.
1. “The old man the boat.” Besides sounding like a rejected Ernest Hemingway title, this deceptive sentence is indeed grammatically correct thanks to some well-placed homonyms—multiple words that share the same spellings but have different meanings.
“'Garden-path sentences' are so-called because as we listen (or read) them, we are actively interpreting the sentence word-by-word, and building an interpretation by considering each word as it arrives,” says Ailis Cournane, Professor of Linguistics at New York University.
The garden-path model is a two-stage model in which the simplest syntactic structure is selected at the first stage using the principles of minimal attachment and late closure. Semantic processing occurs only during the second stage.
In linguistics, comparative illusions (CIs) or Escher sentences are certain comparative sentences which initially seem to be acceptable but upon closer reflection have no well-formed meaning. The typical example sentence used to typify this phenomenon is More people have been to Russia than I have.
The Garden path model proposed by Frazier and Rayner (1982), argues readers only consider initially one syntactic structure for any given sentence and meaning is not involved in the selection of preliminary syntactical meaning.
Such a sentence is often called a garden path sentence because its construction leads the reader to interpret the word floated as the verb for the sentence, but this interpretation must be revised when the word sank is encountered. Changing the sentence to read 'The barge that floated down the river sank' eliminates this ambiguity.
However, not all garden path sentences can be remedied in this way. For instance, consider the sentence, 'The man who whistled tunes pianos.'. This sentence will be read more slowly and comprehended less well than the equivalent sentence, 'The whistling man tunes pianos,' in which the word tunes is unambiguously a verb.".
More simply put: Garden-path sentences are those that we erroneously predict ahead, because as Cournane explains, “We erroneously build structure for the relationships between the words we hear and read because we rely on the more common (or syntactically simple) structures we know.”.
And that’s the making of a garden-path sentence. Caroline is a writer living in New York City . When she’s not covering art, interiors, and celebrity lifestyles, she’s usually buying sneakers, eating cupcakes, or hanging with her rescue bunnies, Daisy and Daffodil.
Ever read a sentence to yourself that just doesn’t seem to sound right? If so, then there’s a good chance you’re dealing with a “garden path” sentence, which is a sentence that is grammatically correct, but due to the way it’s divided and structured, can seem ungrammatical or nonsensical.
Linguists call these “garden path sentences.”. They take you by the hand, lead you down a winding path, and leave you tricked and confused when you reach a dead end. Despite this, they are all perfectly grammatical according to the rules of English. Let’s take a look at why.
An invisible comma belongs somewhere in this sentence, but it’s hard to know where. Your first inclination is probably to take “until the police arrest the drug dealers” as a single clause, but that leaves no subject in the remaining “control the street.” The answer: “Until the police (make the) arrest, drug dealers control the street.”