Confusing headlines and other trips down the garden path

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mèþru
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Re: Confusing headlines and other trips down the garden path

Post by mèþru »

Nevermind, I get it. It's disambiguated by context in the second sentence though.
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Re: Confusing headlines and other trips down the garden path

Post by Vijay »

Of course. But then so are headlines and stuff. :)

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Re: Confusing headlines and other trips down the garden path

Post by Raphael »

From the Guardian:

"Most Conservative MPs don't want Hammond sacked, says ex-minister"

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Re: Confusing headlines and other trips down the garden path

Post by KathTheDragon »

What's wrong with that one?

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Re: Confusing headlines and other trips down the garden path

Post by Vijay »

Maybe it's because someone who's no longer a minister is talking about what the current ministers don't want? But then if that's a problem, that would seem to be more a conceptual problem than with the headline itself anyway.

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Re: Confusing headlines and other trips down the garden path

Post by Raphael »

KathTheDragon wrote:What's wrong with that one?
Not completely clear whether it's referring to most of the conservative MPs, or the most conservative ones among the MPs.

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Re: Confusing headlines and other trips down the garden path

Post by Vijay »

I immediately interpreted it as the first one. I don't think I've ever seen news media categorize people as "most conservative" before. Also, if it did mean that, then I wouldn't expect to see "Conservative" capitalized; I assume that refers to people within a political party rather than people who are more or less conservative in ideology.

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Re: Confusing headlines and other trips down the garden path

Post by KathTheDragon »

Yes, "Conservative" with a capital C is the Tory party, so it can only be interpreted as "most of the Tory MPs"

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Re: Confusing headlines and other trips down the garden path

Post by Salmoneus »

In 1935, The Observer (a newspaper) ran a competition, based on its observation that the language of headlines (then called "captions") was becoming weird. Some entries sent in by readers include:

France Orders Two Comets ("not to be taken in an astronomical sense")

Peace Talks: 80,000 Ethiopian Troops Ready (not exactly a misparsing, but at least suggesting some important information has been elided from the headline)

The British Press Back Germans

Three States Hit By Blizzards: One Missing

The first two are cited (the Telegraph), but sadly the brilliant second pair don't mention the source, and may be apocryphal.
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Re: Confusing headlines and other trips down the garden path

Post by Vijay »

Couldn't "peace talks" in the second headline also be parsed as a complete sentence?

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Re: Confusing headlines and other trips down the garden path

Post by Salmoneus »

From this very forum: A good friend at work is seeing a longstanding crush bear fruit

I wasn't concentrating, and it it seemed like a normal sentence at first and then suddenly what the hell is going on.
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Re: Confusing headlines and other trips down the garden path

Post by Travis B. »

Why would France have ordered a Comet in 1935 is my question.

(The first Comet flew in 1949 if you were wondering.)
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Re: Confusing headlines and other trips down the garden path

Post by jal »

Salmoneus wrote:From this very forum: A good friend at work is seeing a longstanding crush bear fruit
I wasn't concentrating, and it it seemed like a normal sentence at first and then suddenly what the hell is going on.
Fruit of the crush bear?


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Re: Confusing headlines and other trips down the garden path

Post by Vijay »

jal wrote:
Salmoneus wrote:From this very forum: A good friend at work is seeing a longstanding crush bear fruit
I wasn't concentrating, and it it seemed like a normal sentence at first and then suddenly what the hell is going on.
Fruit of the crush bear?


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I was wondering about that, too. At first, especially considering the author of that quote, I thought he was saying something about a hairy gay man producing fruit.

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Re: Confusing headlines and other trips down the garden path

Post by linguoboy »

Vijay wrote:I was wondering about that, too. At first, especially considering the author of that quote, I thought he was saying something about a hairy gay man producing fruit.
Or who is a fruit?

So many possibilities.

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Re: Confusing headlines and other trips down the garden path

Post by Salmoneus »

Exactly: the last three words are all both nouns and verbs, and the one least commonly found as a noun ('crush') is meant to be a noun, while the one least commonly found as a verb ('bear' - well, ok, 'bear' and 'fruit' are both relately uncommon as verbs) is actually meant to be a verb. And all three are relatively specialised words that aren't normally seen in the same contexts.

Meanwhile, just to add to the oddness, the preantepenultimate word, "longstanding" is not a noun, but does have a form that would enable interpretation as a noun (or a verb, for that matter). And come to think of it probably is a noun sometimes (someone must use that as the description of the object of a relationship or the like, surely? Their "longstanding (crush, boyfriend, etc)".
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I'se so silly to be flowing but I no canna stay!

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Re: Confusing headlines and other trips down the garden path

Post by Vijay »

linguoboy wrote:
Vijay wrote:I was wondering about that, too. At first, especially considering the author of that quote, I thought he was saying something about a hairy gay man producing fruit.
Or who is a fruit?

So many possibilities.
He's a fruit who's a bear you've had a longstanding crush on. :)

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Re: Confusing headlines and other trips down the garden path

Post by Raphael »

From Yahoo News:

"Russian helicopter crashes at sea in Arctic, 8 aboard: Norway"

In itself, that wouldn't be a candidate for this thread, but when I first saw it, I somehow overlooked the number 8, so to me it looked like it just said "aboard: Norway".

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Re: Confusing headlines and other trips down the garden path

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Re: Confusing headlines and other trips down the garden path

Post by Salmoneus »

Not sure where the ambiguity is in that one?

Not a headline, but from a BBC sports feed: Lewis Hamilton is complaining of cuts to his team on the radio
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I'se so silly to be flowing but I no canna stay!

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Re: Confusing headlines and other trips down the garden path

Post by Vijay »

Salmoneus wrote:Not sure where the ambiguity is in that one?
Not really ambiguous per se, just confusing (how could a dinosaur realistically have anything to do with a bandit mask?)

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Re: Confusing headlines and other trips down the garden path

Post by Salmoneus »

Well, birds often have them, and birds are just a type of dinosaur, so it's not so surprising that extinct dinosaurs would have them too.


The continuing adventures of BBC online commentators - this one garden-pathed me twice:
That left-hander Max Verstappen kept making a mess off in final practice - we said if he hooked it up there would be time to come and that was a very good lap and he has laid down the gauntlet
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I'se so silly to be flowing but I no canna stay!

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Re: Confusing headlines and other trips down the garden path

Post by Vijay »

Salmoneus wrote:Well, birds often have them, and birds are just a type of dinosaur, so it's not so surprising that extinct dinosaurs would have them too.
It's not that having plumage around the eyes that happens to resemble a bandit mask is surprising to me; it's that it's confusing to me to say just that some dinosaur had a bandit mask, even if "bandit mask" is surrounded by scare quotes, without any further qualification. Until I started reading the article, I had no idea what that actually was supposed to mean. You could give me any number of possible explanations for what it meant, and I'd believe you. You could tell me it was a facial disfiguration. You could tell me it was an optical illusion. You could tell me some bandit just happened to have a mask that resembled the face of some particular dinosaur. You could tell me there was mud on some dinosaur fossil that happened to look like a bandit's face mask.

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Re: Confusing headlines and other trips down the garden path

Post by linguoboy »

Students get first hand job experience (Pratt[*] Tribune)

[*] Community paper for Pratt, Kansas, lest anyone think this is fake.

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Re: Confusing headlines and other trips down the garden path

Post by jal »

linguoboy wrote:Students get first hand job experience
It kinda trended on Twitter :). More of a typo tough :).


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