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Re: Confusing headlines and other trips down the garden path

Posted: Tue Apr 10, 2018 10:09 pm
by Vijay
Hmm...it does strike me as a garden path. :P

Re: Confusing headlines and other trips down the garden path

Posted: Wed Apr 11, 2018 5:18 am
by jal
Risla wrote:Hither Green burglar death flowers 'an insult'
Not a garden path, but I was pretty confused about it until I read the article.
Pretty garden pathy, imho. Is it the "burglar's death" that "flowers an insult"? Or the did the "burglar" send "death flowers" to insult someone? Or is it the insult the flowers themselves, the "burglar death flowers"?


JAL

Re: Confusing headlines and other trips down the garden path

Posted: Wed Apr 11, 2018 6:37 am
by KathTheDragon
It's flowers for the death of a burglar in Hither Green

Re: Confusing headlines and other trips down the garden path

Posted: Wed Apr 11, 2018 10:06 am
by alynnidalar
What an odd news story.

Re: Confusing headlines and other trips down the garden path

Posted: Wed Apr 11, 2018 10:43 pm
by Axiem
I keep reading the "Hither" as "Hitler", which certainly doesn't help my confusion...

Re: Confusing headlines and other trips down the garden path

Posted: Thu Apr 12, 2018 1:56 pm
by Salmoneus
alynnidalar wrote:What an odd news story.
In what way? There have been similar stories from the US, haven't there? (eg Martin/Zimmerman?)

Essentially, the problem is that They are putting up large floral tributes in front of the house of someone who 'justifiably' killed one of Them. The killing is already controversial - one the one hand, many of Us were outraged that the guy was even questioned, because how could killing one of Them ever be wrong? (cf. our own Martin case*) - while on the other hand many of Them were outraged that They weren't being treated as equal human beings with things like a right to life.

But now They are putting up these 'tributes' directly facing the door of the killer, and it's widely seen as a form of intimidation and threat. The killer has 'been forced' to flee their home for fear of reprisals. And why should They be entitled to things like tributes? After all, as one person commented to an interviewer, obviously for a "Normal Person" tributes would be expected, but it was wrong to allow Them to be treated posthumously as though they were Normal People. so various of Us have been removing the tributes, or throwing them on the floor. On the other hand, They have said that given that a young father died violently, it's only reasonable that his friends and relatives and children might want to lay some flowers, and have been putting the tributes back.

It's worth noting however that unlike the usual US cases, "They" in this case aren't a racial, ethnic or religious minority in this case. They're just Them. [and I hasten to point out that i'm not one of Us myself. In this case, 'We' are Daily Mail readers, and 'They' are readers of, I don't know, The Star?]



*though the Martin case is different in important ways. In this case, the burglars forced a man into his kitchen, where he grabbed a knife, fought back and killed one of the burglars. In the Tony Martin case, Martin was lying in wait with an illegal firearm, shot at the burglars without warning, and then repeatedly shot them in the back as they tried to escape the house. [also, Martin was a BNP supporter and his victim was a Traveller, so the politics were way more fraught].

Re: Confusing headlines and other trips down the garden path

Posted: Thu Apr 12, 2018 2:12 pm
by alynnidalar
What an odd response to my post.

Re: Confusing headlines and other trips down the garden path

Posted: Thu Apr 12, 2018 3:11 pm
by mèþru
Henry Vincent was also a Traveller.

Re: Confusing headlines and other trips down the garden path

Posted: Thu Apr 12, 2018 4:52 pm
by Salmoneus
alynnidalar wrote:What an odd response to my post.
In what way?

Seriously, be more constructive in your criticism.

Re: Confusing headlines and other trips down the garden path

Posted: Thu Apr 12, 2018 6:54 pm
by Vijay
Oh, come on. People don't generally feel the need to honor a well-known deceased burglar with flowers (let alone vandalize the grave once it's decorated with flowers). This should not be that hard to understand.
Axiem wrote:I keep reading the "Hither" as "Hitler", which certainly doesn't help my confusion...
There are a few Indian movies, all from the late 90s, called Hitler. None of them have anything to do with Adolf Hitler.

Re: Confusing headlines and other trips down the garden path

Posted: Fri Apr 13, 2018 8:42 am
by alynnidalar
Salmoneus wrote:
alynnidalar wrote:What an odd response to my post.
In what way?

Seriously, be more constructive in your criticism.
Very well, then, I'll elucidate:

You seem to have interpreted my remark as some sort of... I dunno exactly. Some sort of political or social statement? It was not. When I said "What an odd news story", what I meant is that I felt the news story and the situation described therein was, in fact, odd. Out of the ordinary. Unexpected.

I'm not at all sure why thinking the situation was odd--which it was, that's not a very common situation--led you to a big ol' rant about Them and Us and equality and I'm not even sure what else. That response was, much like the news story, odd and unexpected, and didn't make sense as a response to my post. (which, again, was merely to remark that the story was unusual)

Re: Confusing headlines and other trips down the garden path

Posted: Fri Apr 13, 2018 8:48 am
by jal
Nevertheless, I kinda liked that response, gave some insights into British weirdness :)


JAL

Re: Confusing headlines and other trips down the garden path

Posted: Fri Apr 13, 2018 6:44 pm
by Risla

Re: Confusing headlines and other trips down the garden path

Posted: Fri Apr 13, 2018 7:08 pm
by Vijay
Oh God :D

I mean DOG. :P

Re: Confusing headlines and other trips down the garden path

Posted: Sat Apr 14, 2018 2:57 pm
by Qwynegold
jal wrote:
There's so much more where that came from :).


JAL
Haha! :-D

Here's a YouTube video title that I had difficulty understanding:

Get better with money in one year

Re: Confusing headlines and other trips down the garden path

Posted: Sat Apr 14, 2018 10:15 pm
by Vijay
A sentence from the Wikipedia article on #MeToo:

Several groups of Christians, conservative women and radical feminists have argued that #MeToo demonstrates pornography causes women to be viewed as sexual objects and contributes to the prevalence of sexual harassment.

Re: Confusing headlines and other trips down the garden path

Posted: Sun Apr 15, 2018 4:38 am
by KathTheDragon
What's garden pathy here?

Re: Confusing headlines and other trips down the garden path

Posted: Sun Apr 15, 2018 5:36 am
by Salmoneus
Presumably it's a confusion caused by the non-standard grammar. I had no trouble, because there's no real altenative interpretation, but it did feel like gears grinding the wrong way for a couple of words there until things started working again. [because the grammar 'error' throws the parsing into doubt right when there's a word that's formally ambiguous in terms of POS]

Re: Confusing headlines and other trips down the garden path

Posted: Sun Apr 15, 2018 9:58 am
by Vijay
Salmoneus wrote:Presumably it's a confusion caused by the non-standard grammar.
This. I was thrown off by "demonstrates pornography causes." I'm not sure I've ever seen 'that' being omitted in a Wikipedia article in any other context.

Re: Confusing headlines and other trips down the garden path

Posted: Mon Apr 16, 2018 9:12 am
by alynnidalar
Oh, I assumed it was a missing comma:

"...#MeToo demonstrates pornography, causes women to be viewed as sexual objects, and contributes to the prevalence of sexual harassment."

But upon reflection that doesn't make a lot of sense, and "demonstrates that pornography causes..." is a lot more sensible.

Earlier in the sentence, the lack of the Oxford comma also makes it slightly ambiguous whether it's talking about Christians and conservative women and radical feminists, or Christians who are either conservative women or radical feminists. I initially read it as "Several groups of Christians, [those groups being] conservative women and radical feminists, have argued..." before realizing that presumably was not the intended reading given the lack of a second comma.

Re: Confusing headlines and other trips down the garden path

Posted: Mon Apr 16, 2018 9:52 am
by Vijay
alynnidalar wrote:Oh, I assumed it was a missing comma:

"...#MeToo demonstrates pornography, causes women to be viewed as sexual objects, and contributes to the prevalence of sexual harassment."

But upon reflection that doesn't make a lot of sense, and "demonstrates that pornography causes..." is a lot more sensible.
That was a problem I had, too.

Re: Confusing headlines and other trips down the garden path

Posted: Tue Apr 17, 2018 10:12 am
by finlay
ya beat me!

Re: Confusing headlines and other trips down the garden path

Posted: Fri Apr 20, 2018 10:01 pm
by Vijay
I just noticed that one YouTube video I have bookmarked is called:

San Bushmen, Kalahari Desert Botswana Rock the Horse Song 2015

Re: Confusing headlines and other trips down the garden path

Posted: Sat Apr 21, 2018 9:40 am
by Salmoneus
Review: The Tina Turner Musical

The musical is in fact called 'The Tina Turner Musical' (I think?), and this is a review of it. Rather than the musical being called "Review" with "The Tina Turner Musical" being a subtitle, which I originally assumed.

Re: Confusing headlines and other trips down the garden path

Posted: Tue Apr 24, 2018 4:00 pm
by linguoboy
From The Economist print edition: "The biggest sensation was...that one of his three legal clients was Sean Hannity."

I first took this as a subtle implication that Cohen might have other, illegal clients.