Conference thebay::joyoflex

Ok, I'll bite.  I can only spot one path and I don't think it is grammatical,
much less perfectly so.  What is that "sentence" supposed to mean?

JP

Are you considering run-on sentences grammatically correct?
Maybe I'm reading it wrong but I see the sentence as:      

The horse ran past the garden .... [fell]           wrong path
The horse, (which) ran past the garden, fell.	       (or maybe)
The horse ran past (and) the garden fell.	(I still don't get it)

please clarify, or give a simpler example.

     The key word is 'raced', which is used as an adjective modifying
     'horse', although it seems to be the predicate as you are reading
     the sentence:
         
         The horse [which was] raced past the garden fell.
     
     I agree that it's a crummy example.
     
     --Don

re 2.  The second interpretation is correct.

       "raced past the barn" modifies the "horse" that fell.
       Meaning the horse that was raced (by someone) past the barn fell.
       It is not a run-on sentence.
       Is "The horse, raced past the barn, fell" any better (with the
       punctuation)?  Of course we could say
       "The horse which was raced past the barn fell" - but then it's no
       longer a "garden path" sentence!

/brian

re. .3

    It's one of the classic examples (probably by Chomsky or some such person)
    given in the study of Syntax.

    It also plays havoc with natural language parsers that also take "raced"
    to be the main Verb Phrase as they move from left to right...

    How about another type of sentence? (this has 2 possible readings...)

    "Every boy loves some girl"

   

Can a grammatical sentence be ambiguous?  One definition of grammar says:
"a study of what is to be preferred and what avoided in inflection and
syntax."

Furthermore, there are two other meanings of "fell" that make as much (or
as little) sense as the example:  

  The horse raced past the deadly barn.
  The horse raced past the barn pelt.

JP

re .6

In stating "The horse raced past the barn fell", I am considering the syntactic
correctness of the sentence, i.e. Nouns and verbs, etc are in a correct order.

The classic example of this interpretation of grammaticalness (is that a
word?) is the sentence 

"Colorless green ideas sleep furiously."  - which is "grammatical" although
it is nonsensical.

(The above sentence is also used to demonstrate our ability to judge whether
a sentence is grammatical or not even if we have never heard it before)


/brian

Another standard ambiguous sentence is, "I saw the pretty little girls' school."
This is an even better example when spoken, because you can't tell whether
"girls'" should be "girls'" or "girl's." It's rather easy to get ambiguous
sentences by playing with modifiers. I prefer ambiguous sentences that use
a functional shift to acquire the ambiguity. A classic pair is:

	Time flies like an arrow.
	Fruit flies like a banana. 

This is one that is better written than spoken. It can be very disconcerting
when read, but is rather obvious if someone speaks it to you. Many jokes are
based on this sort of shift. 

	Jon

Void where prohibited.

How about the vocal challenge.....

Q. How do you pronounce M A C...D O N ...A L D?

A. MacDonald.

Q. How do you pronounce M A C...D U F F?

A. MacDuff.

Q. How do you procounce M A C...H I N E?

A. MacHine.

R. No, it's machine.

    Prohibited where void.
    
    BS

    George Bernard Shaw is credited with this particular example of
    a "Garden Path", which he used to demonstrate the pitfalls of English
    pronunciation.....
    
    E.N.O.U.G.H     pronounced "Enough"  (eenuff)
    
    W.O.M.E.N       pronounced "Women"   (wimmin)
    
    A.C.T.I.O.N     pronounced "Action"  (akshun)
    
    
    therefore,
    
    G.H.O.T.I        is pronounced "Fish"
    
    		(gh as in enuff, o as in wimmin, ti as in akshun)
    
    Try it on somebody just learning English - it sets them back 
    for weeks !
    
    IP
    

    Everybody I know who learned English as a second language already knows
    about ghoti. Speakers of English as a first language seem to be the
    ones who have never heard of it.