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General whining

The horse raced past the barn fell. It might appear at first glance that this is not a grammatical sentence.

And no matter how many times I read it, it is still not grammatical.

  • The horse that raced past the barn fell (yes)
  • The horse which raced past the barn fell (yes)
  • The horse raced past the barn fell (not grammatical)

I think it is a terrible example, because it really isn't grammatical. Kingturtle 10:58, 16 Nov 2003 (UTC)

I think Kingturtle is right. In order for the sentence to be grammatical, it would need commas. - The horse, raced past the barn, fell. - John —Preceding unsigned comment added by 149.4.115.3 (talk) 23:47, 30 July 2008 (UTC)

How is that^ gramatical? The horse (that was) raced past the barn fell is the meaning. The example is fine.140.232.11.155 (talk) 22:02, 17 October 2010 (UTC)
It is grammatical, the problem is that "raced" is the same form in the active past as it is in the passive. It's like saying "the car driven past the barn" (where the car is obviously being driven by someone) vs. "the car drove..." (well...the car is probably still being driven, but it's presented in an active voice). Still, no one would ever use "raced" like that on purpose, except to confuse people for this example :) Adam Bishop 22:21, 16 Nov 2003 (UTC)
Moreover, it is the standard example used in scholarly discussions of the phenomenon. —Christian Campbell 09:25, 1 July 2008 (UTC)
It's frankly an asinine example. There are multiple books of Yogi Berra phrases out there which would illustrate a garden path sentence far more readily and to a far greater audience. Anyone missing the "standard example used in scholarly discussions" certainly ought to be able to identify a garden path sentence from something more proletarian, so in the end getting rid of this hackneyed, ancient piece of garbage would be an improvement. --Sctn2labor (talk) 05:49, 26 September 2010 (UTC)
I believe the person who argued for proper punctuation is correct, however his punctuation is incorrect. I believe as explained in the article, if punctuated as follows it would be correct and sensible: "The horse that raced past the barn, fell." In common use this is how the sentence would be properly punctuated, and it makes it clear why we punctuate. The only reason we took the "garden path" is because the road sign (punctuation) was not present. Whether it has been used in scholarly discussions or not, it is contrived by not constructing a well formed sentence, and therefore is a bad example to use. Theshowmecanuck (talk) 02:30, 31 October 2010 (UTC)
Completely disagree. Not only is the sentence a classic example used in linguistics, it should not have punctuation added . Would you say "The horse, fell"? Of course not. Same thing with the full sentence—no comma should be used. Furthermore, the sentence is a garden path sentence by virtue of its lack of necessary punctuation; if it were easy to parse, the concept would not be demonstrated. -Phoenixrod (talk) 03:28, 31 October 2010 (UTC)

Is it clearer after the improved rewriting from Dysprosia and Sdw25?

  • The sandwich eaten by Fred was tasty.

Is the above sentence grammatical?

In Sturt and Crocker 95 (?), there's also a nice example:

  • While Philip was washing the dishes crashed on the floor

meaning that While Philip was washing (himself?), the dishes crashed on the floor.


I think the Philip sentence is a bit of a cheat. Strictly speaking, there should be a comma after "washing".
Sdw25 22:56, 16 Nov 2003 (UTC)
Well, ok, that's a reasonable point. And we can't turn to speech either because people would likely pause a bit: While Philip was washing... the dishes crashed on the floor Kowey 08:54, 17 Nov 2003 (UTC)
The Philip sentence is a lot of a cheat. Omitted punctuation is omitted punctuation (and OWL agrees that it is missing punctuation). I've removed that example. — mendel ☎ 13:39, Jun 15, 2005 (UTC)

The same paper also points out that the sentence

  • Everybody knows the truth hurts

does not pose any problems, when you'd think people would do (Everybody knows the truth) (hurts?!)

I like these examples better, but i suspect the horse sentence is more famous. Hmm... maybe we should start a List of linguistic example sentences.

Kowey 18:15, 16 Nov 2003 (UTC)

I'm not a linguist, so maybe my opinion doesn't count, but I agree the sentence is grammatically incorrect. As far as I understand, English can only remove the relative pronoun when it is NOT the subject of the relative clause, and in the example given, the horse is the subject of the passive verb "was raced". Hence, the pronoun must stay for the sentence to be grammatically valid. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 68.48.89.183 (talk) 22:30, 17 April 2009 (UTC)

that's the whole point of the garden path: you've been tricked into parsing "raced" as a description of what the horse does and not of the horse itself. The correct parsing is "The horse <description of horse> fell", which horse fell? The horse raced past the barn. If you wanted you could add "that was": "The horse *that was* raced past the barn fell." But saying "The horse *was* raced past the barn fell" eliminates it's pedantic qualities as a garden path example: it's no longer ambiguous, it only makes sense if you consider fell to be a noun (chiefly British). —Preceding unsigned comment added by 70.27.106.25 (talk) 06:51, 29 October 2009 (UTC)


'The author wrote the novel was likely to be a best-seller.' is a valid sentence. The author wrote that the novel was likely to be a best-seller is fine, but then it's not a Garden Path sentence. The author wrote "the novel was likely to be a best-seller" is fine, but is not a Garden Path sentence when written, only when spoken. It's only Garden Path when spoken, when written correctly, with punctuation, you will be read it correctly the first time due to punctuation. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 180.200.137.89 (talk) 00:05, 28 March 2013 (UTC)

i can see and hear it now

It took a while before I understood the horse-sentence. It wasn't until I read the example "The logs floated down the river sank" at [1] that the horse-sentence finally clicked in my head.

I feel that the description in the article of the horse-sentence is much better. And I hope that others will *GET* it faster than I did. Kingturtle 18:51, 16 Nov 2003 (UTC)

P.S. As a high school teacher, I have to unravel such sentences often. Students are still developing their writing skills, and they write some outrageous garden path sentences. It hurts my brain sometimes trying to unravel the sentences. Kingturtle


Thanks for the link! This will be useful for school. And also thanks for the P.S; I always figured garden path sentences were generally artifical since people would detect that they were writing something nonsensical. Very interesting to see in it the real world. Kowey 18:59, 16 Nov 2003 (UTC)
The next time I run across student garden path sentences, I will post them in here. Kingturtle 19:05, 16 Nov 2003 (UTC)

Several things:

  1. "The dog I had loved bones.": I don't think this is a good example; I think most people will naturally read this as (The dog I had) (loved bones). (The dog I had loved) isn't very natural sounding, so the chances of being led down that garden path doesn't seem great.
  2. "The tycoon sold the offshore oil tracts for a lot of money wanted to kill JR.": d'oh, can someone please explain how this is grammatical? I can't figure it out.
  3. Not sure what point you're trying to make about natural language parsing. How is garden path a challenge? Because you want a computer to get garden path right, or because you want the computer to get garden path wrong the same way a human does? A neuroscientist would say, "this is great: we can make the computer do it wrong the same way a person does by requiring the computer to parse iteratively, ergo humans probably parse iteratively.". That's not a problem, it's an opportunity.

--Chinasaur 04:55, Mar 26, 2004 (UTC)

  1. I think you're right. Although the correct meanings of all of these are getting awfully familiar to me...
  2. "The tycoon (who was) sold...oil tracts...wanted to kill JR."
  3. I was wondering the same thing.

Quincy 08:10, 26 Mar 2004 (UTC)

Couldn't it mean "The tycoon sold the tracts for a lot of money, (he) wanted for facilitating the killing of J.R."? 惑乱 分からん 16:25, 1 August 2006 (UTC)
Clever, but a missing comma is a missing comma.icambron 19:02, 17 September 2006 (UTC)
You're right. we want the computer to get it wrong the same way we do, but that's not as easy as it might look. I've made a somewhat clumsy attempt at patching some holes in number 3. The language is a little rough, but maybe this is an improvement? -- Kowey 17:48, 27 Mar 2004 (UTC)

Could somebody please explain the last sentence? "The player kicked the ball kicked the ball" doesn't sound right to me. --AlexMyltsev 17:59, 16 Dec 2004 (UTC)

Oh geez ... "The player kicked the ball kicked the ball." I know that's grammatically correct, but oof, is it difficult to parse ... Gelu Ignisque
If it helps: "The player (who was) kicked the ball (...) kicked the ball". Maybe we should make a table with intitial reading and correct reading". -- Kowey 19:55, 20 Apr 2005 (UTC)
As much as I try, I can't seem to parse that properly. What goes between the words "ball" and "kicked?" Even if I cheat by adding punctuation marks, I can't make sense of it. I even tried Googling the sentence, but the only result was the entry itself. Does anyone have a better interpretation of this? I think such an explanation would benefit the people reading as well, anyway. -- Cma 21:55, 24 May 2005 (UTC)
That's really interesting. In between "ball" and "kicked" is a verbal pause. A long comma, dot dot dot. Let's try this another way. THE PLAYER kicked the ball KICKED THE BALL. The uppercase bit is the main part of your sentence: The player kicked the ball. The lowercase bit tells you which player: The one to whom the ball was kicked. -- Kowey 07:49, 25 May 2005 (UTC)
Ahhhhh, The player to whom the ball was kicked kicked the ball. Eureka!--Smallwhitelight 00:13, 1 Jun 2005 (UTC)
If I'd known the writer, I'd have kicked his balls... 惑乱 分からん 16:23, 1 August 2006 (UTC)


"The editors authors the newspaper liked hired quit." I can't get this one, I've been trying for a couple of hours now. Is it really correct? As someone pointed out above, could be a point in adding an explanation for all examples brought up. 89.253.79.216 (talk) 22:14, 17 December 2007 (UTC)Oskar

Here is my understanding of the meaning: The newspaper liked some authors; those authors hired some editors; those editors quit. So, to me, the sentence parses as "The editors (hired by authors whom the newspaper liked) quit." -Phoenixrod (talk) 00:26, 18 December 2007 (UTC)
But doesn't "The editors authors" signify some kind of ownership of the authors by the editors, i.e. the authors were hired by the editors? And if so I can't get the sentence to be correct. 91.194.26.1 (talk) 10:20, 18 December 2007 (UTC)Oskar
I read it the other way around, as some kind of ownership of the editors by the authors, as in "The editors (who were hired by authors the newspaper liked) quit." I could see your reading if there were an apostrophe. But I have no problem removing the example if it's not in the league of the others. -Phoenixrod (talk) 03:54, 19 December 2007 (UTC)

Shoot the attendant

If you wish to shoot the attendant will be happy to load your gun. Sorry, but it's cheating--this sentence only makes sense with a comma, and if there were a comma, there would be no ambiguity. I've removed it. --Migs 06:12, 3 September 2005 (UTC)

Why does the comma matter when these are spoken?

Commas (and other punctuation) are crude ways of signalling pauses, intonation contours, and other phonological features we use in speech to mark constituents (among other things). Of course they take on a kind of life of their own as written language becomes a constant and important activity and people make rules about it. People have made rules about where commas must or mustn't be used in written English, and other people respect them or don't to differing degrees.
I can pronounce a sentence like the If you wish to shoot one with very little pause or intonation dip between the words shoot and the, and might well do so (if I thought about it in time) on purpose because it is funny. So this is for me a perfectly legitimate garden path sentence. Of course, I can also say it with a pronounced (in both senses of the word) pause and complex intonation dip-and-rise in the same place, and would certainly transcribe that pronunciation, which would not exemplify the garden-path phenomenon, with a comma. If we take this as an example of spoken English(,) we needn't include the comma and should be able to include the sentence. I'm for putting it back--it's a good one. Same can be said of several others discussed above.
--Lavintzin 15:26, 25 February 2006 (UTC)
I've no recollection of being taught that the commma between an "if" clause and the clause it modifies is compulsory. Moreover, one of my books gives a use of the comma as to "avoid collisions", and this as an example. Nothing about the comma in this instance being to make the sentence grammatical. Maybe there are dialectal differences.... -- Smjg 11:10, 5 September 2005 (UTC)
http://www.ego4u.com/en/cram-up/writing/comma?10 Here's a source for the comma requirement. More can be found by Googling comma "if clause". By the way, how are dialectal differences resolved on articles where they might make a significant difference, anyway? --Migs 02:12, 6 September 2005 (UTC)

I removed the latest example given--While Anna dressed the baby spit up his food. This is also cheating, since a prepositional phrase should be followed by a comma when used as the introductory part of a sentence. — Preceding unsigned comment added by Cma (talk • contribs) 05:44, 14 October 2005 (UTC)

Commas

Most people would write all of these sentences with commas. The point of garden path sentences is that people says them in conversation without pauses because they don't realise that they are confusing until they have finished saying them (or possibly never because it makes sense in their heads). I don't think you can say that any sentence is 'cheating' becuase it hasn't got a comma without saying they are all cheating Ted BJ 10:30, 2 April 2006 (UTC)

Well, not quite all of them would normally be written with (or disambiguable by) commas. E.g. I would have a hard time putting a comma in "Fruit flies like a banana", for instance.
But in the cases where the comma could or perhaps should be written, I agree with you: if the comma (pausal intonation) needn't be pronounced, these sentences are good examples when understood to represent speech, regardless of whether they follow somebody's rules for correct writing.
--Lavintzin 22:26, 2 April 2006 (UTC)

I would write it as 'fruit-flies like a banana.'

-- 17 September 2006
OK, that could be. (I did a quick google on "fruit-flies", which I suppose would include cases with a hyphen. On the first 5 pages of results I only saw cases of "fruit flies" —no hyphen. fwiw.) And conceivably this possible orthographical distinction might be reflected in somebody's speech by a pronunciation difference that would in some degree disambiguate the meanings, maybe a quicker transition between fruit and flies. I'd still maintain that (1) the pronunciation difference is not required, and (2) it is perfectly possible to pronounce the sentence so as to provide no bar to either parse up till the word "banana". And even then it is semantic incompatibility (i.e. the fact that the sentence makes no sense), not intonation or pauses, that clues you in that the modifier-plural.noun parse must be the right one.
--Lavintzin 04:04, 18 September 2006 (UTC)
Nope, fruit fly is right and fruit-fly is wrong. You use hyphens to clarify compound nouns used as modifiers -- see this icambron 08:57, 14 May 2007 (UTC)
"Fruit fly" is a noun phrase if it's ambiguous you put it in quotes. ie: "Fruit flies" like a banana. This particular one rarely is so it looks wrong but eg: "The house on the mountain" is in a valley. 86.0.255.95 (talk) 08:47, 6 July 2009 (UTC)

Strictly speaking, the #1 example ought to be "The horse, raced past the barn, fell." or even.. using parentheses. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 75.72.21.221 (talk) 05:14, 1 October 2007 (UTC)

It could also be like: The horse, "Flat Fleet Feet", fell. The naming of horses is after all an extreme sport. 86.0.255.95 (talk) 08:47, 6 July 2009 (UTC)

Fishie fishie fishie fish

How about "Fish fish fish fish fish fish fish"? It sounds like gibberish of course, but so long as you remember that 'fish' can be noun or verb, singular or plural, mentally sprinkle in words like 'that'and and throw in the occasional passive construction, you can come up with all sorts of possible meanings. Consider two:

Fish fish for fish that fish - which are fished by fish - fish for.

Fish that other fish fish for in turn fish for fish that other fish fish for.

This does not mean of course that you can make it mean anything you want involving fish (and nothing but). Unless you start out with the right sorts of templates the sentence is meaningless, and you need to constantly backtrack to understand what might be going on.

--Gargletheape 16:47, 12 May 2006 (UTC)
Perhaps you want Buffalo buffalo Buffalo buffalo buffalo buffalo Buffalo buffalo. -- kowey 20:20, 2 January 2007 (UTC)

Another parsing

"The horse raced past. The barn fell."

Equally valid? DS 12:19, 17 September 2006 (UTC)

No. I (at least) can't achieve a single pronunciation that allows both parses. So for me this is like the old ones "What's in the road? A head?" or "What's dragging, a long behind?" Yes, the same words in the same sequence can be used, but the intonation and pausings must be changed to get the different parse. That's different from these garden path sentences. Some of them *can* be pronounced so as to distinguish the two competing parses (see discussion above about commas), but they can also be pronounced so as to be ambiguous. Your parse *must* be pronounced so as to distinguish.
--Lavintzin 14:24, 17 September 2006 (UTC)
I think a distinction can be drawn here between garden path oral and garden path written sentences. Yes, orally, the above sentence ("The horse raced past. The barn fell.") would not be confused with the example in the article. In text (without punctuation) it would be. It seems to me to be a legitimate solution to the puzzle implicitly posed by the original example ("The horse raced past the barn fell.")It would still be a garden path sentence, because the reader would, on first reading the sentence, take "the barn" as the object of the preposition "past", when it could be the subject of the verb "fell". Boxter1977 (talk) 11:38, 22 May 2008 (UTC)
Orally (with intonation) the sentences "The horse raced past. The barn fell." would not be confused with the example in the article. In text (with punctuation) they wouldn't be either. Intonation is essentially the oral equivalent of punctuation here, you can't really compare one with and the other without. With the fullstop in the middle (whether written or inferred by pronunciation) it is not a garden path sentence, without it, it is. Though I am sure there are sentences which are only garden path sentences when spoken (because of homophones) this is not one of them. Angelastic (talk) 16:00, 22 May 2008 (UTC)

For yet another parse, try "The horse raced past the barn fell." —Preceding unsigned comment added by 75.45.5.191 (talk) 00:30, 2 March 2009 (UTC)

Constructed Languages

Aren't there some conlangs without Garden Path sentences? That is to say, specifically constructed such that all of the relationships within a sentence are unambiguous? I think Lojban or Loglan. Somebody mention this is the article if it matters.

The conlang Ithkuil was deliberately constructed to eliminate all possible ambiguity. The language forces you to specify every possible grammatical category. For example, a noun must be inflected in one of 96 cases. It has no known speakers, because it takes so much time to formulate each word. You will have to contact the inventor, John Q, to find out if garden path sentences are possible.
-- Solo Owl 17:13, 12 January 2014 (UTC)

The cotton clothing is usually made of

I removed this example because it (and its explanation) are worded in an awkward manner that involves ending a clause in a preposition. It should be The cotton of (or from) which clothing is usually made, which I think we can agree would not be called a garden path sentence, since the meaning would in that case be perfectly clear. There. Can it be removed again now? elvenscout742 00:14, 2 January 2007 (UTC)

Not by my lights. The "awkward" wording is perfectly natural to me.
Ending clauses (including relative clauses) with "stranded" prepositions is older than Shakespeare and is a very well-established feature of many modern Englishes, including my native language. I certainly agree that if you use the "of which clothing is usually made" wording you will not have a garden path sentence. So that version should of course not be used as an example in the article. My own dialect permits that way of wording it, but marks it as highly formal and fairly unusual; for millions of English speakers it is pedantic or "uppity" at best and ridiculous in any case. These people will always (as I will almost always) say "Who am I talking to?" rather than "To whom am I talking?" (I understand that it was Churchill who said of the practice of preposition-stranding, "That is something up with which I will not put.")
For those whose English language admits the stranded preposition construction, this is a perfectly good example of a garden path sentence, and I see no reason, based on the preference of some to avoid the stranding of prepositions, for omitting it. It would be like removing "ain't" from a list of English words with an initial [eʲn] sound because one prefers not to use the word oneself, or removing "legs" from a list of body parts because one prefers to refer to the "lower limbs". (Yes, the "of which" construction sounds that prissy to a lot of native English speakers.)
Your argument is, essentially, "This sentence can be rephrased, in a manner to which I am partial, so as to keep it from being a garden path sentence". In fact all the garden path sentences can be rephrased so as to be immediately clear. That does not justify removing them from the list of garden path sentences. The point of these sentences is that, although they initially lead you to expect to find a clear meaning in one way, they actually reward you with a clear meaning after you do a double-take and head down a different semantico-syntactic path. (This contradicts, I think, your implication that garden path sentences are not "perfectly clear".) The point is not that the same message couldn't be expressed in some other way that would avoid that effect.
--Lavintzin 01:41, 2 January 2007 (UTC)
Eh, I suppose I'll let it go, but I think that Churchill thing might be apocryphal - there are circumstances where it is unavoidable, but the fact that a lot of people have done it for a long time does not make it correct, any more than using "effect" as a verb is correct. Also, I see little need for the list at all, and the one being debated isn't even the most inappropriate, as I now realise. Try saying "I convinced her children are noisy" - its meaning is obvious and it could not be interpretted any other way. elvenscout742 01:34, 3 January 2007 (UTC)
I can say the "convinced her children" one just fine. It is a fairly short garden path, but for me a real one. It is true of all of them, by the time you get to the end, that "it could not be interpretted [sic!] any other way." If you mean using "effect" when people mean "affect", I agree, but it is a perfectly good verb. Churchill, again: "Important change of an ancient custom can only be effected by Act of Parliament". No Act of Parliament has yet changed the ancient custom of stranding prepositions, and it would probably be powerless to do so in any case.
My favorite stranded-preposition sentence is the following, uttered by a child sick in bed upstairs, whose mother has brought things from the library to read to him: "What did you bring all those books that I didn't want to be read to out of up for?"
Hmmm "For what did you bring up all of those books from which I would have preferred that you not read to me?"
--Lavintzin 01:55, 3 January 2007 (UTC)

Yet another example?

Would Throw the baby down the stairs a cookie. be a valid example? 165.95.11.23 23:59, 29 January 2007 (UTC)

I guess the meaning is intended to be "the baby who is down the stairs". I would have to word that as "throw the baby downstairs a cookie". That is a garden path sentence, albeit one with a short path. (It could be made longer: "throw the baby out in the garden a cookie.") If this is a Pennsylvania Dutch-ish sentence meaning "Throw a cookie down the stairs to the baby", then it isn't a (proper) garden-path sentence because it has non-standard syntax. I.e. it does lead you down a garden path, but there doesn't turn out to be a standard-syntax parsing that gives the intended meaning. --Lavintzin 02:47, 30 January 2007 (UTC)

Likewise Throw Mama from the train a kiss. Actually both sentences have poor syntax, since it would be better to place the direct object (a cookie, a kiss) immediately after the indirect object (the baby, Mama), and before the phrase with adverbial function. Word order is paramount in English, less so in inflected languages. Yiddish sometimes has different endings for the accusative and dative. If you grew up in a community where Yiddish and Yinglish were widely spoken, this sentence would not be a garden path, although it might elicit a chuckle — no doubt the lyricist's intent. -- Solo Owl 18:39, 12 January 2014 (UTC)

Star Spangled Banner

A while ago, I added an example from the Star Spangled Banner. It was removed because it was misquoted (I forgot a comma), "removed from context", and "controversial".

The sentence is:

  • "Whose broad stripes and bright stars, through the perilous fight, O'er the ramparts we watched, were so gallantly streaming?"

It is easy to correct the missing comma. The context doesn't help, because a reader still thinks that the flag (rather than the ramparts) is the thing being watched until the final clause. Even if it were controversial (it is not), that is no reason not to add it -- instead, it is a reason to make note of opposing viewpoints.

So, I'm going to leave this note here for a while, and if I don't hear anything that convinces me otherwise, I'm going to return it. Novalis 20:03, 6 March 2007 (UTC)

... I did. Novalis 23:57, 15 March 2007 (UTC)

Bummer! Sexism and gendered language, invisible?

Ouch! I must admit surprise at seeing the following entry: "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."

I was taken aback by the author's comment following the quote ("uses the same effect") as I was expecting some sort of explanation for using degrading sexist material in place of innumerable harmless examples. Yet, I was more surprised, even shocked, that a conversation about the article is taking place with no previous mention of the unacceptable nature of hitting "a woman with a baby" and, then, hitting "her with a brick"--pointing to a complete absence of consciousness concerning the continuation, rehabituation of casual insults directed at women.

If I had the confidence and the time I would seek to delete this offensive quote myself or spin the article in such a manner as to reflect the power of public language and why linguistic competence and responsibility must widen to also include content and context, symantics, as well as sounds and/or grammatical concentration on, letter/word/sentence, syntax. As long as the casual denegration of women remains unchallenged, the silent violence will remain invisible and, hence, unchanged--a path that leads us back not only to the Garden, the Serpent, tree, fruit, a forgiven Adam, and the now century's long torture of Eve. {{Thomhera 18:12, 1 August 2007 (UTC)}}

It's a joke. JOKE. You must be a smash at parties.Falard 02:39, 25 August 2007 (UTC)

Past vs. passive participle (and deleted examples)

They aren't quite the same thing. "Gone" is a past participle, but not passive. "Raced" in "has raced" is also a past participle but not a passive one. Crucially in the sentence under discussion, "raced" is passive, meaning something close to "having been raced".

btw, somebody took out all the example sentences. I think that was a loss to the article. Yes, some that weren't such clear examples had been included in the list at various times, but taking all the examples out was not the best way to fix that problem, imho.

--Lavintzin 17:04, 10 September 2007 (UTC)

Article needs more meat

Many writers here have commented on the importance of punctuation. Yes, commas and hyphens are paramount in parsing these sentences correctly. However, once that is noted, we come to a deeper question: if most or all of these sentences can be elucidated by proper punctuation, what is their value. More commentary on the use of garden path sentences in psycholinguistics (and/or garden-linguistic sentences in psychopaths) is needed. --Cladist (talk) 08:17, 9 January 2008 (UTC)

Their value lies in the facts that (1) most linguists recognize the written form of the language as distinctly secondary, and whether or not punctuation affects this in the written form doesn't obscure the main point, which is (2) that there are legitimate pronunciations of these sentences which do not have pauses or intonation dips (which might correspond to written punctuation) and which can therefore guide hearers down a garden path, making them suddenly pull up sharply (mentally) and start recalculating the meaning and syntax of the sentence. --Lavintzin (talk) 23:43, 18 January 2008 (UTC)

Lavintzin is perfectly right in his remarks about linguistics and primary/secondary forms of language. I think there is another important point to add to this, though: most of the garden path sentence examples have grammatical structures that perfectly parallel non-garden path sentences that are normally written without commas or other forms of punctuation. So, for example:

The government plans to raise taxes were defeated.
The government proposals to raise taxes were defeated.

The second sentence not only doesn't need punctuation; if you were to put a comma in it, you'd very likely get it marked as incorrect use of punctuation. 63.80.102.10 (talk) 01:00, 22 July 2010 (UTC)

Editors authors sentence

I deleted the following sentence, which is a nice sentence, but not, to my mind anyway, a good example of a garden-path sentence.

"The editors the authors the newspaper liked hired quit."
(The editors (that are hired by the authors that in turn are liked by the newspaper) quit)

What is the garden path one is started down, only to be brought up short? I suppose one could argue for it being a list or a compound nominal (e.g. "the editors, the authors, the newspaper and the public VerbPhrase") but I cannot pronounce the sentence with the pauses I would have to use with the compound nominal or the list. In any case, that's not the main interest of the sentence. It is a great sentence about (the limits of) multiple embedding of unmarked relative clauses, but, I still think, not a good garden-path sentence. --Lavintzin (talk) 23:43, 18 January 2008 (UTC)

Deleting that sentence was the right thing to do. It's not really an example of a garden path sentence, it's an example of multiple Center embedding. 63.80.102.10 (talk) 00:53, 22 July 2010 (UTC)

Syntactic ambiguity

I just restored a sentence "The man who whistles tunes pianos". It had been deleted as showing syntactic ambiguity rather than being a genuine garden path sentence. The premise is apparently that if it shows syntactic ambiguity it is not a garden path sentence. (I in fact am not sure why it is syntactic ambiguity if that implies it is non-lexical: it is clearly the word "tunes" that is the locus of the ambiguity.)

It produces, I believe, a genuine garden path, though a short (and not terribly noteworthy) one. When I hear “The man who whistles tunes" I expect a continuation like "usually has some secret on his mind" or "is a nuisance", but not "pianos", and when I hear "pianos" I have to go back and recompute to get the right parse. That is what makes a garden-path sentence.

One could remove all the sentences quoted in the article if one applied the criterion "Not legitimate if it shows syntactic ambiguity".

--Lavintzin (talk) 00:57, 20 January 2008 (UTC)

Throwing cows

I removed the following sentence:

"Throw the cow over the fence some hay."
(Throw some hay over the fence for the cow.)

It is essentially a variant of Throw the baby down the stairs a cookie discussed above, and would raise the same red herrings. It is not standard syntax if the meaning is as given (it sounds Pennsylvania Dutch-ish, and may be standard in that dialect of English), and if it means "throw some hay to the cow that is over the fence" it is still odd. For me it would be better "for the cow on the other side of the fence". In any case, it raises too many extraneous questions to be a good sentence for the article. (Many others have been omitted already in the interest of tightening up the article.) --Lavintzin (talk) 22:23, 25 May 2008 (UTC)

He said - She said

"He said that fruit is dried."

Is this a punctuation error or garden path? Also, I think garden path only occurs in written language. I can't remember or imagine any of these examples being ambiguous when spoken. --Peageez (talk) 12:09, 24 April 2009 (UTC)

Car driven

The car driven past the barn crashed.

In what way might somebody begin to parse this incorrectly? 72.75.86.126 (talk) 00:45, 10 August 2009 (UTC)

I agree. Hspstudent (talk) 19:07, 11 August 2009 (UTC)

Title of the Page

Shouldn't the title be Garden-Path Sentence, not Garden Path sentence? (See hyphen section 1.2.1) Hspstudent (talk) 19:06, 11 August 2009 (UTC)

Other languages

I'm bilingual and my mother tongue is Spanish so I was surprised to find about these... But see the article exists in English and I think 'bout two other languages, and I think they were all germanic tongues... So I wonder if garden path sentences are only possible in certain languages or maybe not being a linguist and enjoying the ambiguity of words I am failing to see the possibility of a garden path in my own language. Anyone with proper language could mention the viability of garden path sentences or any rule of thumbs about them and making them?Undead Herle King (talk) 04:00, 13 August 2009 (UTC)

Just my opinion, but decades ago I read that "natural" language is recursive. If that is true for most (if not all) languages, then it follows that semantic backtracking will be encountered in most language. From that, it seems to follow that re-parsing of the structure is also a general issue. But I wonder if languages which require a strict order of (for example) verb-subject-object or those which require connectives (indicating part of speech) could be immune. "Fruit flies." is ambiguous: If "Fruit" is the name of (say) a pet bird, it means one thing. If it is the answer (say) to the question:"What kind of flies are those?", it is another. But in a language where verbs must come first, we'd have something like "flying Fruit" in the former case. While in general English is expected to be Subject-verb(-object), there are so many exceptions that the "rule" is almost useless.Abitslow (talk) 17:14, 8 March 2016 (UTC)

Alternate parsing

In trying to parse this: "The complex houses married and single soldiers and their families." I actually came upon another parsing other than the one suggested:
"The complex, houses married, and single soldiers and their families."
As if to say: "Houses married the complex with single soldiers and their families."
in the same way you might say "Alexandria married the scholarly, Roman soldiers and their slaves." 70.27.106.25 (talk) 07:24, 29 October 2009 (UTC)

Another example

The moved garbage can may cause accidental litter.
This one's a tad easier since after failing on the first read-through (i.e."what does the moved garbage do?") "garbage can" is readily recognizable as the intended noun. 70.27.105.145 (talk) 13:48, 5 November 2009 (UTC)

Consideration...

I think the problem on the is page is there is a lack of distinction between spoken and written sentences.

For instance, take this joke as an example...

Q: Why did the architect have his house (made) backwards?

A. He wanted to watch TV.

Spoken there is no problem with syntax however written the sentence becomes redundant if it is written in it's correct form...

Q: Why did the architect have his house (maid) backwards?

A. He wanted to watch TV.

I think that this subject needs clarifying. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 86.130.134.174 (talk) 13:52, 28 November 2009 (UTC)


How about "leave me be leave me be leave me believe me believe me"?

This article is fascinating, even more when you think that some languages just don't have this kind of sentence. Portuguese, for example, is completely devoid of these "garden path sentences". —Preceding unsigned comment added by 187.60.71.208 (talk) 03:08, 4 September 2010 (UTC)

They can readily occur in the several languages with which I am familiar. What is there about Portuguese syntax that makes it different? Rumiton (talk) 09:47, 12 October 2010 (UTC)
For the main example of this article, "The horse raced past the barn fell.", the Portuguese translation would not be a garden path sentence. The direct literal translation would be "O cavalo corrido perto do celeiro caiu". In order for the Portuguese user to perceive that it is the horse that had raced in the past tense would be "O cavalo correu perto do celeiro (caiu)" where the introduction of "caiu" would make no sense. Portuguese differentiates forms for its past tenses of its verbs and when its participles are used as adjectives, thereby more or less eliminating garden path. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 24.91.63.13 (talk) 20:55, 5 October 2013 (UTC)

Merge suggestion

Both Garden path sentence and Paraprosdokian speak basically about one and the same phenomenon: the tail of the sentence drastically changes its meaning. Lorem Ip (talk) 00:13, 29 December 2010 (UTC)

Oppose merge -- In its proper meaning, "garden path sentence" refers rather narrowly to syntax, while Paraprosdokian can refer to a broad variety of rhetorical effects. AnonMoos (talk) 01:02, 29 December 2010 (UTC)
Convinced. Withdrawn. Lorem Ip (talk) 01:09, 13 January 2011 (UTC)

An example that requires world knowledge to parse

"Jules Verne wrote A Journey to the Centre of the Earth and Around the World in Eighty Days." As a spoken sentence, it could be interpreted that Verne wrote two books in eighty days. (Or, indeed, one book, called "A Journey to the Centre of the Earth and Around the World", in eighty days.) As a written sentence, the capitals clarify the issue. As a spoken or written sentence, anyone who is aware of Jules Verne has the world knowledge to parse the sentence correctly. So, does this qualify as a garden path sentence? 93.92.153.12 (talk) 14:37, 11 February 2011 (UTC)

A Garden path sentence is usually one with elements A B C, where the grouping [A B] is meaningful on its own, but when C comes along, then the only possible interpretation which makes any sense is A [B C] (where B and C are more closely related to each other syntactically than either is to A). In your example, both interpretations make sense (though only one interpretation is historically factually true), so it's more of an ordinary case of "prepositional phrase attachment" ambiguity (see examples under Filtered-popping_recursive_transition_network#Purpose etc.) than any kind of real Garden-path sentence... AnonMoos (talk) 16:06, 11 February 2011 (UTC)

Ah. Thank you, that's an exceptionally clear explanation. 93.92.153.12 (talk) 08:19, 15 February 2011 (UTC)

The last example is pretty poor

The sour drink from the ocean. Initial likely partial parse: The drink that was sour... Final parse: Those that are sour drink from the ocean.

Though this one may lead you down the a non-intended path, the "Initial likely partial parse" can still be inferred after reading it entirely. It could mean "The drink that is sour is from the ocean". May not work as a sentence, but would make perfect sense if it were a title or heading. I think it should be removed. Anoldtreeok (talk) 07:03, 9 January 2012 (UTC)

No dumping violators

There is a sign across from my driveway that reads, NO DUMPING VIOLATORS WILL BE PROSECUTED (capitalized, and punctuation-free, as on the sign). If you think this is a garden path sentence, email me and I will go and take a picture of it and figure out how to upload pictures to Wikipedia. (In fact there is a path next to it, but it leads into a national park, not a garden.) -- Solo Owl 19:07, 12 January 2014 (UTC)

Bad example is bad

The current version of the page (30 May 2014) includes this passage under "Simple":

A second phrase can cause the reinterpretation of meaning (see paraprosdokian):
The first phrase hinges upon the use of "time" as the subject noun, "flies" as the verb and "like" as an adverb of manner, while the second phrase uses "fruit" as the adjective to the subject noun, shifts "flies" from verb to subject noun, and "like" as a verb (as in "prefers").

That phrase is an example of a garden path sentence, but its meaning is refined by "banana" and only applies to a new understanding of the second half. The way it is worded here, the previous author apparently thought that "time flies" are a species of flying insects somewhere. (A poorly thought-out variant "Time flies like an arrow, fruit flies like a banana" is an example of the second phrase forcing a reinterpretation of the meaning of the first but at the expense of timing an animal "in the manner of an arrow" and even less plausibly "in the manner of a banana").

In short, it is an example of the page topic but the current gloss being provided is entirely wrong. — LlywelynII 02:35, 30 May 2014 (UTC)

I have to admit that while I have heard this one, I never actually reinterpreted it as the article would state. Instead I thought the joke was the utter obviousness of the second half of the sentence, as fruit indeed flies like a banana, that is to say not very well, compared to the more insightful simile of the first half. Perhaps it is because the syntax of the first half makes me mentally emphasise "flies" and think of it as a verb in both sentences, and nothing comes up in the second half that makes this interpretation impossible. The sentence has a double meaning, but I don't think it's a garden path sentence in the same sense of most of the other examples here because the obvious parse does not lead to a dead end. Double sharp (talk) 04:07, 10 June 2016 (UTC)

grammar on a linguistics article?

There seems to be a couple quality problems with this article, most pressingly, a case of bad grammar:

[ignore]Its activation occurs when the parser comes across a syntactic violation such as The broker persuaded to sell the stock [12] or when [\ignore]parses synthesizes an unsatisfactory disambiguation [ignore]on an ambiguous string of words such as The Doctor Charged the patient was lying[\ignore].

Probably has to read a parse synthesizes or or parses synthesize. Depending on whether you are talking about multiple parses and their typical activity or one parse and its example activity. (not to mention what is weird about a broker doing a little persuading?)

Related, "The result of yet another study conducted ..." yet seems a superfluous word. It also seems an opinionated word. Why is wikipedia having a conversation with me?

Also related, "The obviousness of fruit flying like a member of its class and the poor aerodynamic properties of bananas," Sure. Or, the fact that banana is a type of fruit makes the sentence quite odd. On a completely unrelated note, examination of the sentence may yield an alternate interpretation, one where flies is a noun and like is a verb.

Parts of the article seem like they could use a good rewrite. It seems some linguists may have forgotten to KISS. (obviously not talking about the garden path sentences.) Usually, small words are an asset in writing, not a secret shame.

The article also seems very short given the topic. It relates to computer parsing and artificial languages and other human languages, none of which have their own sections. The various types of garden path sentences are hinted at, but only a few are exampled, only a few of which have their types explicitly identified. Use in comedy should probably be split off into its own section as well.

Who is stanley fish and why does he rate the first paragraph and a book promotion?

174.35.187.168 (talk) 12:32, 26 June 2015 (UTC)

Yes, the page is a mess and needs a total rewrite by someone who is extremely knowledgeable. It is beyond anything that I can patch, and I'm about to take it off my watchlist. (But Stanley Fish has a hyperlink, so he doesn't need explaining.) Sminthopsis84 (talk) 18:20, 27 June 2015 (UTC)

The horse raced past the barn fell. *funny*

The first time I read it, it caught me out, "The horse raced past the barn, fell" ? and stumbled on the word "fell", as mentioned - But on reading it again, I got: "The horse raced past(,) the barn fell" as two separate statements. Maybe there are a few ways to see this one? :)

78.148.24.81 (talk) 21:37, 10 January 2016 (UTC)

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"like" in "I, for one, like Roman numerals"

Is it an article? Or a preposition, perhaps?--126.205.66.9 (talk) 22:31, 6 December 2016 (UTC)

I, too, am thoroughly confused by this example. It says "like" is an article, but "like" is not an article under any circumstances. I find only one possible interpretation of the sentence and wonder if it should be removed. Dylanvt (talk) 01:18, 1 March 2017 (UTC)
Removed. Staszek Lem (talk) 02:26, 1 March 2017 (UTC)
See OED on "like", if you have access; its classification in this precise context is disputed, but if you switch "preposition" or "conjunction" for "article", your objections will be resolved. Nyttend (talk) 00:22, 13 March 2017 (UTC)
The problem is not in "like" The problem is that the sentence is perfectly valid in its "consecutive" reading. "Why are you wearing this weird watch with weird marks on it? - I, for one, like Roman numerals." On the other hand, if "like" is not a verb, then we have a sentence without a verb I am baffled to understand. Staszek Lem (talk) 17:26, 13 March 2017 (UTC)

I, for one, like Roman numerals

By the definition in the lead, the result of the re-analysis by the reader should be a grammatically correct sentence, and the examples are intended to illustrate such grammatically correct sentences. When like is not interpreted as a verb, the example "I, for one, like Roman numerals." is not really a good example of a grammatical sentence. The example is obviously a play on words that is similar to a garden path sentence, but using it as an example would appear to distract from, rather than clarify, the illustration of a garden path sentence. For this reason, I would suggest removing this example. If we want more examples, there should be plenty of other examples in the relevant literature. -- Boson (talk) 19:28, 13 March 2017 (UTC)

Significance

The article does a good job of explaining what the garden path sentence is internally, but it does so in complete isolation from reality - actual usage: is it a linguistic game like palindromes, or a joke like spoonerisms? Is it a way to hide meaning, like anagrams? A stylistic tool like an oxymoron?

I think it would be nice to add how garden path sentences function in the language: either used purposefully, as jokes or stylistic tools in poetry that force two meanings into the same phrase, or when created accidentally - as stylistic errors, where the reader parses the sentence differently than the author intended, is forced to backtrack, re-parse, and it disrupts the flow, confuses and detracts from the experience.

These erroneous garden paths are usually much simpler than the fancy examples; use of a contraction like "I'd" where the contraction can be either for "had" or "would", the ambiguity unresolved until you encounter a verb that resolves the tense of the sentence, or use of a pronoun which resolves to a different subject than expected (in this case the sentence is grammatically correct in both interpretations but only one makes logical sense!) example 1 example 2

Sharpfang (talk) 12:06, 11 October 2019 (UTC)

You're right, and therefore I would include the famous Groucho Marx quote: Time flies like an arrow, but fruit flies like a banana --WernR (talk) 12:16, 22 October 2019 (UTC)

"man the boat"

Thank you for your effort in making the text more referenced. However it seems that even the "reliable sources" are as sloppy as wikipedians. The reasoning "When readers encounter another the following the supposed noun man (rather than the expected verb), they are forced to re-analyse the sentence, concluding that man is being used as a verb" is faulty. There are numerous ways the text "The old man the" may be continued without assuming that 'man' is a verb. ("The old man the boat belonged to died.") The actual breakup happens only when the full stop is encountered.

The same problem is with the explanation of the following example.Staszek Lem (talk) 17:32, 13 March 2017 (UTC)

I have changed the wording and added a footnote about the measured reaction time following the word after man. --Boson (talk) 19:26, 13 March 2017 (UTC)


It took me a while to figure out the horse sentence. The explanation didn't do it, even after looking up past participle from grade school. A better explanation would be: "The horse, which was raced past the barn, subsequently fell. It seems that the problem in the original is poor structure not having the descriptive clause isolated by commas. no?
Also, it seems that the 'housing complex' example would be cleared up in context because the word 'complex' would have been used before and keyed-in the reader. I understand this concept, but these are my thoughts...
P.S. What happened to the multi-tilde button? -- Steve -- (talk) 19:46, 10 April 2019 (UTC)
Maybe "The old manS the boat" is correct? Any sources? ·Carn·!? 10:11, 2 March 2020 (UTC)
@Carn: How can that be? — Smjg (talk) 12:30, 13 May 2020 (UTC)
Thanks for changing the wording Boson, but it still doesn't reflect the fact that "The old man the boat" still satisfies the original parsing of "man" being a noun, even though you've gone past the second "the", up until you reach the full stop. As Staszek Lem said, it could be completed with "The old man the boat belonged to died". Maybe someone just reverted your change since then. Either way, the current text still needs improvement. Quietbritishjim (talk) 11:54, 9 June 2020 (UTC)

Possible additions to the list of examples

To include more types, we could possibly add (with references):

  • The cotton clothes are made of grows in Mississippi.
  • While the man hunted the deer ran into the woods
  • The coach smiled at the player tossed a frisbee.
  • I convinced her children are noisy.

-- Boson (talk) 19:30, 13 March 2017 (UTC)

Only if they are considered true garden-path sentences. The frisbee sentence, for example, is (as far as I can understand) an example of "part-of-speech ambiguity" and not a "classic garden-path sentence". If you can't support the claim "Sentence NNN is a garden-path sentence" do know your sentence can be added to List of linguistic example sentences (already linked to, in the See Also section) if not already. CapnZapp (talk) 09:50, 18 September 2020 (UTC)

Issues with the horse race example sentence. Clarify? Reorder examples?

The current first example, "The horse raced past the barn fell", is so incomprehensible I don't even know where the problem is. I'm not a Professor of English, nor an equestrian, nor an architect, but I'm missing something still. How can a horse race fit in a barn? Does Bever write science fiction? If so, that should probably be mentioned. Or if not that, by what rule of English is it acceptable to omit the "that was" from "the horse *that was* raced past the barn fell." Is this what people consider poetic? (Or as Bever would apparently write, is people consider poetic?) Or is that even what's happening? That's just the *ONLY* part of the explanation that make it parsable in the slightest.

My point is this example is more confusing than helpful. Now, I can be as stupid as the next guy at times, but I'm at least well educated, so surely I'm not the only one who's completely lost here. The latter two examples aren't a problem, they are as perfectly clear (i.e. illustrative of the concept of the article) as the horse race/barn thing is baffling. So I propose either: A) moving the horse race barn to the end of the examples, if not just removing it altogether, or B) perhaps someone can rewrite the explanation to make it make sense to a layperson? Ninjalectual (talk) 21:04, 25 May 2018 (UTC)

The horse example is pretty standard in the linguistic literature. It is of course confusing. That's what makes it a garden path sentence.
As for "by what rule of English", the term is "reduced relative clause", which was mentioned in the article; I've now linked the relevant Wikipedia page. Every comprehensive English grammar discusses it. Surely you have no problem with, say, "The horse [that was] bought by Peter won the race" or "Any book [that was] left in the cafeteria yesterday can be recovered at the Lost and Found."
The question, then, is why is it OK to omit "that was" in some examples, but not others? In the bought/left cases, not only do horses not buy things and books not leave things (cf. verb argument), but "bought by" and "left in" clearly signal that it must be a participle.
I've also linked "agent" etc., which you've marked as "clarification needed", to the relevant articles. --Macrakis (talk) 22:31, 25 May 2018 (UTC)
Agree with Ninjalectual. This is not a case where technical mastery need to be assumed. It's more likely the editor just reported on the explanation in the book (which has a completely different audience). I've expanded the steps of the explanation. CapnZapp (talk) 07:50, 17 September 2020 (UTC)
Don't just revert attempts at rectifying this User:Mathglot. If you have a better suggestion, feel free to discuss, but by reverting, you're dismissing the concerns. CapnZapp (talk) 11:54, 17 September 2020 (UTC)
User Mathglot said the below at my user page:

Hi, CapnZapp, I welcome your good-faith efforts to improve Garden-path sentence, including your explanations of certain examples in the article, and how they work. Please keep Wikipedia's principles of original research and verifiability in mind when making your changes. Unfortunately, no matter how good or how helpful your explanations to a reader, it's simply not acceptable to add your clarifications, unless they are based on the content you find in a published, independent, secondary, reliable sources. This is how we make sure that the encyclopedia is not based on the random opinions or ideas (no matter how good!) of our editors, but strictly based on the published sources. That's why I removed your unsourced content a second time. You're welcome to put it back a third time, but please, only with citations to reliable sources this time, if you do; okay? Thanks, and happy editing! Mathglot (talk) 21:50, 17 September 2020 (UTC)

The problem with this is that Mathglot does not at all address the issue raised. The issue is that our explanations are not enough. A regular reader doesn't walk away from the current explanation enlightened. It is too-technical and does not break down the parsing in enough easy-to-follow steps. Editors are unhappy with the current wording, and since you have reverted the changes, can I please ask you to suggest a constructive path forward, User:Mathglot. CapnZapp (talk) 09:29, 18 September 2020 (UTC)
I took the time to add a foreign example, because someone requested it, and I thought that was an area I could contribute to improving the article right now. As to your comment that I "[did] not at all address the issue raised": you're right, I didn't. This is a volunteer project, and I'm spending most of my time at other articles, these days. But note that by reverting, I am not dismissing your concerns, rather, I am upholding policy-based requirements as explained above. You claim above that the issue is that the explanation in the article isn't enough. I don't know that that's true, but let's say you are right. If you think so, then go find a better explanation in a reliable source, summarize it for the article, write a citation and add it to the article. I feel like I already said this in the material you quoted, and that we're going around in circles.
P.S. As a matter of style, your quoting of my statement from your Talk page, and including my signature, and placing it above with non-standard formatting, followed by the second half of your message unindented, might be misleading or confusing to the reader as to who said what, as there are three different indent levels and two signatures in that one post. I hope you don't mind, but I've set off the quoted material with a standard quotation style for Talk pages, and adjusted your indentation per the standard; the purpose is to make it clearer, who said what, and I hope it achieves that. See WP:TALK and WP:THREAD. Thanks, Mathglot (talk) 01:35, 19 September 2020 (UTC)
Don't act as if your reverting is helpful Mathglot. Don't talk down to me as if I am a beginner in need of trivial explanations of policy. You know full well that you have a menu of actions you can take, including doing nothing, tagging the article, and perhaps best: taking previous additions and building upon them, improving them further. Reverting with no other attempts at progression is one of the least helpful approaches, since you spend 2 seconds clicking "undo" to negate maybe half an hour's work of another. So far you have done you damned best to avoid constructive on-topic discussion and I feel I had to drag you to the talk page. So I'm asking once more: How do you propose we address the "understandability deficiency"? If you continue not only to avoid improving the article yourself, but to undo the improvements of others, I will ask you to consider removing the example entirely, since at the moment the concern is that the example is not sufficiently explained. Its presence is more confusing than its worth. CapnZapp (talk) 23:10, 19 September 2020 (UTC)
It would be a shame to remove it, as this sentence is the canonical example of a garden-path sentence as originally provided by Bever, and if removed is very likely to be reinserted again by some other editor at some point in the future, who will wonder why the original, and perhaps most famous example isn't there. You can see here where the original explanation was added, citing the original source, by Boson (talk · contribs). That said, and speaking only for myself, I would have no objection to your removing the example entirely if you find it so confusing that there is no way of sufficiently explaining it while still abiding by the principles of verifiability policy. Then again, why explain it at all if it is that difficult? One could leave the example in, with no explanation, and leave it up to the reader to make sense of it; as editors, we are not obliged to explain everything. By the way, arguments about retaining content based on how long it took to produce it carry no weight at Wikipedia, whereas undoing original research is, in fact, supported by policy, even if it represented hours of good-faith effort by an editor interested in improving the article, and removing it was as simple as a button-push. I'm sorry, but that's not me writing the policy. Mathglot (talk) 00:18, 20 September 2020 (UTC)

Time flies like an arrow; fruit flies like a banana

I checked incoming links. Time flies... is the only article linking here of an example we don't already mention. (That and False Scent, which is more of a passing mention) CapnZapp (talk) 07:45, 17 September 2020 (UTC)

Please don't merely revert the additions of other users, User:Mathglot - more constructive would be to improve upon them. I'm sure we can work out the referencing from the linked article. Unless you object to the addition itself? CapnZapp (talk) 11:50, 17 September 2020 (UTC)
Since I see you have made other edits, but you haven't addressed how to add the Time flies example in a way acceptable to you, this is your second call to engage in discussion, User:Mathglot. Please do not communicate through edit summaries. Please do not communicate on my user talk page about specific edits or articles. I am asking you to engage in discussion here, on the Garden-path sentence talk page. I want to avoid making further edits you simply revert, since that is wasting my time. Per WP:BRD now is the time for discussion. Instead of making me guess and/or waste my time on edits you merely revert, let's talk it through. Regards, CapnZapp (talk) 09:38, 18 September 2020 (UTC)
@CapnZapp:, just source it. You don't have to guess, this was already explained clearly in a single word, Unsourced, in the edit summary for revision 978853973 which removed the content you added. That's what edit summaries are for, and I consider this discussion completely unnecessary. If you're uncertain why that is a valid reason to remove your content, please refer to Wikipedia's WP:Verifiability policy, which states that "Any material that needs a source but does not have one may be removed." There's no need to "discuss" or "work out referencing", just reference it. It's as simple as that. I have no idea what it is you wish to discuss here, but I'm always willing, if it's about improving the article. As for the proper venue for communicating with you, please see WP:TALK. If that seems opaque, I've explained further at your talk page. Mathglot (talk) 22:52, 18 September 2020 (UTC)
I looked at the Time flies like an arrow; fruit flies like a banana page but could not immediately find anything generally useful. I'll add back my addition with a [citation needed] tag and let's see what the community can find for us. CapnZapp (talk) 23:14, 19 September 2020 (UTC)
Nothing in ten days; removed. Mathglot (talk) 10:26, 29 September 2020 (UTC)

I found one in the Bat Chum article

'The last verse of each of the three names the elephants as "dyke breakers".'

I fixed it though. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 108.53.218.5 (talk) 10:38, 4 October 2020 (UTC)

External Links Fix

Hey, everyone!

This is the first time I am editing a live article. I noticed that some of the names of the authors of the "External Links" link are wrong. I went ahead and fixed them according to the source cited. If that was incorrect procedure, please forgive me and roll-back on my changes.

Thank you for your time, 

 Luccamagalhaes (talk) 06:36, 2 November 2020 (UTC)

Confusing jargon

Two sections suffer from this: "#Brain processing in computation" is one, with terms like disfluency, P600, and others introduced out of the blue.

There's also section "#Effects of disfluency" (what does that section title even mean?) but with the exception of one sentence (the third one) which does make sense, nothing else does. There's a bunch of technical terms which have no context and are not explained. Both of these sections need a lot of work, to briing them up to snuff, and integrate them with the article so they provide something of value to the reader. If not, they should be deleted. Mathglot (talk) 06:58, 22 September 2020 (UTC)

No improvement since. I've blanked these two sections added in 2012, and so impenetrable that they hadn't been improved in eight years. Mathglot (talk) 05:43, 30 December 2020 (UTC)

Lack of capitalization causes misunderstanding

Using capitalisation for persons and nouns like in German would prevent double meanings:

  • "The Old man the boat" and "The old Man (rows) the boat"
  • "The Complex houses families" or "The complex Houses (are owned by) families"

Needless to say that some lazy or left-wing anti-capitalism Germans refuse to use capitals. --87.141.29.207 (talk) 17:08, 6 February 2021 (UTC)

That would do nothing for spoken language. AnonMoos (talk) 21:36, 6 February 2021 (UTC)
Agreed. Your examples (when read) both have one interpretation each. Unlike a garden-path sentence, the reader [who understands both words, in either case] isn't "tricked" into assuming a wrong interpretation. -- K (ª | Contributions/Kai_Burghardt) 22:20, 6 February 2021 (UTC)
@87.141.29.207:, this is not helpful for improving the article. If you colored all nouns red, that could help, too. (But that also doesn't help improve the article, either.) Or putting all nouns in boldface. (Ditto.) Bottom line: we're stuck with the English language that we have, and this article isn't about *preventing double meanings* or tricking out the language with crutches to make it better; it's about describing things the way they are. (With citations to reliable sources, of course.) This is collapsible per WP:NOTFORUM, but could make an interesting speculative aside at the WP:REFDESK. Mathglot (talk) 01:41, 7 February 2021 (UTC)

Other languages?

This article reads as if English is the only language. Obviously there must be many examples in other languages, presumably including ambiguous kanji in Japanese, and other things I don't even know about. We should at least acknowledge this, and if possible provide examples. We link to the "Garden-path sentence" page on wikipedia sites for some other languages, but that's not the same thing. Adam1729 (talk) 23:02, 5 June 2020 (UTC)

This article reads the way it does because the overwhelming majority of English-language Wikipedia editors master only English. If you're capable of finding, researching and sourcing foreign-language examples, I'm sure we'd welcome them. CapnZapp (talk) 07:48, 17 September 2020 (UTC)
@CapnZapp and Adam1729:, okay, I added a German one. By their nature, they are not so easy to explain for non-speakers, but I did my best. If the explanation itself doesn't make sense, please tell me where the difficulty lies, and I'll try again. Interestingly, the source for the German example uses wordplay right in the title of the work; I included a |trans-title= param in the ref, but it's basically impossible to translate the pun in the title into English. 10:34, 17 September 2020 (UTC) -- Preceding unsigned comment added by Mathglot (talk o contribs)
Previous comment wasn't signed, only datestamped. CapnZapp (talk) 11:47, 17 September 2020 (UTC)

@Adam1729:, I see that you've got German and French among your languages. Did you want to comment on, or improve the German example? In searches at books and Scholar, I see that German (de:Holzwegeffekt), Italian (efetto garden-path, frasi labirinto), Spanish (teoria or modelo del garden path), and Portuguese (frases garden-path, efeito labirinto) have scholarly articles about it, sometimes only or mostly, about the English examples, sometimes with native examples. So far, I haven't seen anything in French. I agree with you that it would be good to globalize this article by adding examples from other languages, or, failing that, to at least include references from other languages commenting on the English examples, and how they are similiar to, or different from, their own languages. Let me know what you think. (please Reply to icon mention me on reply; thanks!), Mathglot (talk) 03:06, 23 September 2020 (UTC)

Hey, all! I have inserted an example of a sentence in Brazilian Portuguese. If there is something off about my edit, please revert it! I would also enjoy some feedback, as this is my second edit on Wikipedia. Thank you for your time Luccamagalhaes (talk) 00:26, 10 November 2020 (UTC)

Hi, I can't find the sentence but we learnt a great example of a garden-path sentence at high school Latin. It was a long sentence and it got totally reevaluated with the last word. I remember that the ambiguity came from multiple sources. I remember some of the base words being: sumere (to eat) vs sum (am) ; some form of pig or sow (sus?) ; silva (forest) ; some trick with posessive pronouns . I hope someone knows the sentence, latin is great for building "entanglements" in a sentence which "collapse" later on. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 89.223.140.101 (talk) 01:57, 14 February 2021 (UTC)

Latin is a special case, or at least, a different case, because it's so rich in grammatical cases for nouns, sentence order is quite arbitrary, and words can be placed in a wide variety of ways, so that is very likely the cause of some of the ambiguities. That, and the fact that although there are six cases, not every one of the cases has a different inflection for every noun; sometimes they are the same, so you might think a word was in the ablative, but maybe it's actually a dative, and it's the word order that is tricking you. Latin can be tricky. If you find the source for your Latin sentence, please post it. Mathglot (talk) 03:04, 14 February 2021 (UTC)

Brazilian Portuguese section

Hello, User:Luccamagalhaes, and thanks for your edit adding the Brazilian Portuguese example. Back around the time when I was looking around for foreign-language examples and ended up adding only the German one, I also ran across a lot of research in Portuguese (mostly Brazilian). I saved my notes, but I never got around to adding anything, so I'm gladd that you have done so.

If you'd like to expand that section, here are some of the references and buzzwords I found, that might be useful for keying into a search engine. Note that many Brazilian researchers use English technical expressions even when writing in Portuguese; others use a Portuguese word, or sometimes they just mention the Portuguese word once in parentheses, then carry on using just the English expression. I suspect this is because some of these research areas are fairly new in Portuguese, and probably academics have not settled on a single translation yet. For example, Late closure is sometimes called Encerramento Tardio, but I don't think there is complete agreement on that translation yet among Brazilian linguists. Anyway, here are some buzz words you can use to search in Brazilian academic journals:

frases garden-path, (efeito) garden path, efeito labirinto, TGP, Processamento de Frase, processamento da frases garden-path evidências de eyetracking, Late closure [Encerramento Tardio], informação suprasegmental, good-enough [`boas o suficiente'], Aposição Não-Local (ou Aposição Alta) [High Attachment].

Also, a lot of the examples of garden-path sentences in Brazilian journals, were either English examples with explanations of htem in Portuguese, or they were obvious translations into Portuguese, of garden-path sentences that originally were English. I didn't save those in my notes, it didn't seem worth it. I only have these two which seem like they are Portuguese originals, and not translations:

  • Alguém baleou o empregado da atriz que estava na varanda.
  • Enquanto Maria costurava as meias caíram no chão.

I'm not sure the first one really qualifies as garden-path; it seems more just ambiguous due to the antecedent of estava, but that goes to the heart of the definition of it, so I'm not certain. The second is a transitive/intransitive verb issue, and whether meias are an object of one verb, or subject of the other, so I guess it qualifies.

Here are some references I found:

My understanding of Portuguese is limited, but I can read and understand the journal articles, although I might miss the trickier points; but it sounds like you're a native speaker, and you might be able to use some of this information to develop the Wikipedia article even more. I hope so. Mathglot (talk) 04:56, 30 December 2020 (UTC)

Well, it looks like Luccamagalhaes (talk · contribs) is a student and hasn't returned after their class ended. @American In Brazil, Elinruby, PauloMSimoes, and Bageense: not sure if you are interested in this quirky corner of linguistics and ambiguous grammar, but have a look and see if it piques your interest. As a quick example of what this is all about, read this sentence:

The horse raced past the barn fell.

Did you understand it? Read it again; it's a fully grammatical sentence in English—if you keep staring at it, you'll get it. That's a "garden-path sentence". There's a whole, sub-branch of linguistic study of this type of sentences, because of the insight it gives into how languages are constructed, and how the brain processes language ambiguity. This discussion section is about how to improve the article section on Brazilian garden-path sentences.
One of the issues, is that most of the academic study has been done in English. Sometimes even academic articles in other languages printed in foreign journals depend on English examples, either in the original English, or translated rather literally, and not really optimal as examples of the target language. So the trick is, to find Portuguese examples that are original, and not translations from English; extra points, if the explanation of the "trick" in what makes it ambiguous in Portuguese, also demonstrates the same ambiguity in English, as the pair suspeita/suspect do in Portuguese and English in the example in the article. Thanks, Mathglot (talk) 03:24, 14 February 2021 (UTC)
Mathglot, no, I didn't understand it and had to see the article. I'm unfamiliar with "raced" used as a participle, and "man" used as a verb. I could have understood "The complex houses married and single soldiers and their families.", had I paid more attention. I know the verb "to house" and the sentence makes sense.
"The horse raced past the barn fell.". Now I interpret it like this: Of all the horses racing, the one which raced past the barn fell. Because there are no commas. With commas (The horse, raced past the barn, fell), now we're talking about only one horse. I'm not sure if in English the commas can change meaning in that way. --Bageense(disc.) 14:16, 14 February 2021 (UTC)
pressed for time and cannot look right now, but I read this sentence quite differently, as an extension of barn doors and horses escaping. Interesting. Will come back to this Elinruby (talk) 18:07, 14 February 2021 (UTC)
Bageense -- as a flowing complete single sentence, it means "The horse WHICH WAS RACED past the barn fell", with an elliptical relative clause containing a passive verb. Your interpretation is a kind of quasi-headlinese with three somewhat disconnected clauses, which needs at least semicolon punctuation ("The horse; raced past the barn; fell"). AnonMoos (talk) 21:25, 20 February 2021 (UTC)
P.S. In chapter 7 of The Language Instinct, Steven Pinker provides a preceding sentence as clarifying context: "The horse that was walked past the fence proceeded steadily, but thje horse raced past the barn fell." AnonMoos (talk) 07:12, 20 May 2021 (UTC)

And back to ivory tower navel-gazing.

The section about practical importance in natural language got wiped out and the article is back to the state of describing a subject in painstaking detail without ever approaching placing it anywhere outside of "artificial language constructs created by linguists and neuroscientists." All organic examples have been wiped out, we're back to contrived artificial constructs that create an impression that the subject bears no relevance to actual day-to-day language whatsoever.

I'm not going to try again. Maybe someone else has some well-sourced analysis of use of garden path sentences as stylistic errors or humor? Sharpfang (talk) 23:36, 28 March 2021 (UTC)

I accidentally made a garden path sentence today: At face value I gave the most simple and obvious and boring answers ever, getting a C, which I realized was just after I got it.
Which could be shortened to: I realized the grade was just after I got it
So here's an example of an organic example of a garden-path sentence for the benefit of anyone trying to add the section back in. (Originally this would've been a separate post, but I decided to reply to this instead.)  AltoStev Talk 16:25, 8 June 2021 (UTC)

Wiki Education Foundation-supported course assignment

This article was the subject of a Wiki Education Foundation-supported course assignment, between 26 August 2019 and 11 December 2019. Further details are available on the course page. Student editor(s): Zherfkens.

Above undated message substituted from Template:Dashboard.wikiedu.org assignment by PrimeBOT (talk) 22:03, 16 January 2022 (UTC)

Wiki Education Foundation-supported course assignment

This article was the subject of a Wiki Education Foundation-supported course assignment, between 24 August 2020 and 9 December 2020. Further details are available on the course page. Student editor(s): Luccamagalhaes. Peer reviewers: SillyCrumb.

Above undated message substituted from Template:Dashboard.wikiedu.org assignment by PrimeBOT (talk) 21:35, 17 January 2022 (UTC)

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