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Garden path sentences in other languages? | ||
Tags: Syntax | Multilingual | ||
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 Language Learning Forum : Philological Room |  | |
| Ari Heptaglot Senior Member Norway Joined 6582 days ago 2314 posts - 5695 votes  Speaks: Swedish*, English, French, Spanish, Portuguese, Mandarin, Cantonese Studies: Czech, Latin, German | Message 9 of 20 14 March 2012 at 1:59pm | IP Logged | |||||
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It's not really a garden path sentence, but it can easily be made into one by adding another adjective. Something like "flores blancas y naranjas grandes".
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| mrwarper Diglot Winner TAC 2012 Senior Member Spain forum_posts.asp?TID=Registered users can see my Skype Name Joined 5226 days ago 1493 posts - 2500 votes Speaks: Spanish*, EnglishC2 Studies: German, Russian, Japanese | Message 10 of 20 14 March 2012 at 2:29pm | IP Logged | |||||
Haha! You're right about that -- I hadn't even noticed ;) Still, it is necessary to know that about orange trees, while for all I know garden path sentences rely on grammatical features -- the reader stumbles on something that doesn't add, and only then he realizes another grammatical category can be applied to an earlier word so that everything makes sense.
Ari, that's still ambiguous rather than misleading; it can be either "big orange and white flowers" or "big oranges and white flowers". 2 persons have voted this message useful | ||||||
| tommus Senior Member CanadaRegistered users can see my Skype Name Joined 5866 days ago 979 posts - 1688 votes Speaks: English* Studies: Dutch, French, Esperanto, German, Spanish | Message 11 of 20 14 March 2012 at 8:31pm | IP Logged | |||||
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A three word sentence can be a garden path sentence.
"Workers can paint." 1. Workers can paint your house. 2. Workers at the paint manufacturing company put paint in cans. The English verb "to can" used to be far more popular when many people "canned" vegetables and fruit, etc. from their gardens to preserve them. I think such canning is becoming less common. Canning was somewhat of a general term for preserving vegetables, including using bottles, jars and other containers. I suppose you could consider "Workers can." to be a two word garden path sentence. But of course you could create lots of such sentences using verbs that have two or more unrelated meanings. Although not a GPS, "Workers can can" is a perfectly valid and good sentences. In the local dialect in this area, people would probably pronounce these two "can"s differently, something that would sound like "People kin can". Another variation: "A paint can can". (A paint can can contain paint). Are there any languages that have no such verbs that can mean different things? Esperanto perhaps? Can any Esperanto verb also be a noun, such as English "fly"? I suspect not, due in part by standard verb and noun endings. 1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||
| tommus Senior Member CanadaRegistered users can see my Skype Name Joined 5866 days ago 979 posts - 1688 votes Speaks: English* Studies: Dutch, French, Esperanto, German, Spanish | Message 12 of 20 14 March 2012 at 8:38pm | IP Logged | |||||
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I guess you could have a "garden path sentence"-like sentence that has only one possible meaning, and as such, disqualifies itself. The classic example is:
""Buffalo buffalo Buffalo buffalo buffalo buffalo Buffalo buffalo." http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Buffalo_buffalo_Buffalo_buffalo _buffalo_buffalo_Buffalo_buffalo 1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||
| mrwarper Diglot Winner TAC 2012 Senior Member Spain forum_posts.asp?TID=Registered users can see my Skype Name Joined 5226 days ago 1493 posts - 2500 votes Speaks: Spanish*, EnglishC2 Studies: German, Russian, Japanese | Message 13 of 20 14 March 2012 at 11:29pm | IP Logged | |||||
From reading the Wikipedia article linked by the OP
it is clear that ambiguous phrases don't cut it per se; the most likely interpretation must be grammatically incorrect. Now, a garden path sentence that is also ambiguous would be truly remarkable. Any ideas? Edit: BTW the seven buffalos sentence is just crazy! :) Edit: Oh, it's eight buffalos. Silly me, of course everything's clear now! Edited by mrwarper on 14 March 2012 at 11:33pm 1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||
| tommus Senior Member CanadaRegistered users can see my Skype Name Joined 5866 days ago 979 posts - 1688 votes Speaks: English* Studies: Dutch, French, Esperanto, German, Spanish | Message 14 of 20 15 March 2012 at 3:18am | IP Logged | |||||
The horse raced past the cow jumped but fell. 1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||
| stelingo Hexaglot Senior Member United Kingdom Joined 5832 days ago 722 posts - 1076 votes Speaks: English*, Spanish, Portuguese, French, German, Italian Studies: Russian, Czech, Polish, Greek, Mandarin | Message 15 of 20 15 March 2012 at 7:04pm | IP Logged | |||||
I thought that naranja used as an adjective was invariable? 1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||
| manish Triglot Groupie Romania Joined 5546 days ago 88 posts - 136 votes Speaks: Romanian*, English, German Studies: Spanish | Message 16 of 20 15 March 2012 at 7:32pm | IP Logged | |||||
It doesn't change its ending according to gender, since "naranjo" only means orange tree, but it does have a plural form... I don't think it's right to say "flores naranja" for "orange flowers"... Or did you mean something else? Grammar terms are not my strong point. 1 person has voted this message useful |
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