Confusing headlines and other trips down the garden path

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KathTheDragon
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Re: Cheese that smells

Post by KathTheDragon »

Makes perfect sense to me if you to not parse 'to value' as an infinitive. I took 'value overflow behaviour' as the object of 'to'.

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Re: Cheese that smells

Post by zompist »

Found this on my Twitter feed: Fox News had a report headlined CRAZY WORLD CUP SEX RULES.

Someone commented, "I bet it does."

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Re: Cheese that smells

Post by Zju »

Bacteria Killing WINGS - more awesome than I expected it to be.

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Re: Cheese that smells

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Zompist Books Feedback: Music Lineup At ZeebFest2015 Dominated By Drone Metal & Shoegaze
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Re: Cheese that smells

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----
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Re: Cheese that smells

Post by ---- »

UKIP Bullies Stop-Homophobia

The dash helped but at first glance this title looked really strange!

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Re: Cheese that smells

Post by Thry »

xD if only homophobes were bullied instead of gays.

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KathTheDragon
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Re: Cheese that smells

Post by KathTheDragon »

If only no-one were bullied >.<

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Re: Cheese that smells

Post by linguoboy »

Academics 'Yes' vote research fears

First ten times I read this, I couldn't make any sense of it at all. It wasn't so much a garden path as impenetrable undergrowth. (An apostrophe would've helped.)

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Re: Cheese that smells

Post by Salmoneus »

linguoboy wrote:Academics 'Yes' vote research fears

First ten times I read this, I couldn't make any sense of it at all. It wasn't so much a garden path as impenetrable undergrowth. (An apostrophe would've helped.)
Yep, I was tempted to post that one myself!
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Re: Cheese that smells

Post by jal »

The original BBC article now says "Scottish independence: Academics say 'Yes' vote could harm scientific research"


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Re: Cheese that smells

Post by Salmoneus »

Feltz slams 'vile' Rolf claims abuse

Without contextual awareness, that one's almost unparseable.
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jal
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Re: Cheese that smells

Post by jal »

Salmoneus wrote:Feltz slams 'vile' Rolf claims abuse
Without contextual awareness, that one's almost unparseable.
Even with, I find it difficult, probably because "abuse" here seems to mean the kind of reactions i/o the abuse by Rolf. It now reads "'Vile' reaction to Vanessa Feltz's Rolf Harris claims", so it seems that for a 2nd time the BBC corrected unparseble headlines.

EDIT: Re correction, it seems their short headlines on the main page are different from the article titles. Here are some others I just found:

Murder charge over taxi rank death
Charities face council cash axe

Not that imparseble, but still gardenpathy.


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Re: Cheese that smells

Post by linguoboy »

Curious George Named NYC Family Ambassador

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Re: Cheese that smells

Post by Salmoneus »

Something someone said on an online forum:

baby ginger and raspberry preserves y'all
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Re: Cheese that smells

Post by Salmoneus »

Ooh, this one tricked me:

Metropolitan police officer denies helping uninsured flirt
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Re: Cheese that smells

Post by linguoboy »

Surprised Sal hasn't beat me to this one (a tweet from David Cameron):
I welcome President Obama's pledge to help the Iraqi government tackle this crisis and get aid to those fleeing ISIL terrorists.

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Re: Cheese that smells

Post by Salmoneus »

Won't somebody think of the poor ISIS terrorists!?
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Re: Cheese that smells

Post by linguoboy »

From the Beeb: "Janay Rice blames the media for feeling embarrassed and hurt after a video was leaked showing the NFL star punching her in a lift".

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KathTheDragon
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Re: Cheese that smells

Post by KathTheDragon »

Wow. Multiple garden paths there.

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Re: Cheese that smells

Post by jal »

KathAveara wrote:Wow. Multiple garden paths there.
Well, I can't see a single garden path there. Unless I'm parsing it completely wrong, but that doesn't seem to be the case, given the article itself.


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KathTheDragon
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Re: Cheese that smells

Post by KathTheDragon »

The initial parse wants to make the media the ones feeling embarrassed and hurt. The second parse wants to make 'the NFL star' reference Janay Rice, and the third parse wants to make 'her' reference Janay Rice instead. Not knowing who Janay Rice is, I can't sort out the last part of the headline.

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Re: Cheese that smells

Post by Salmoneus »

"Her" is Janay Rice. Not, as it could be syntactically, the media.

The most natural syntactic reading is probably:
"Janay Rice blames the media for [the media] feeling embarrassed and hurt after a video was leaked showing [NFL star Janay Rice] punching [the media] in a lift". Obviously, though, the semantics there don't fit.

[the headline's a little sedate, really. It makes it sound like there was just some normal wife-beating going on, or even just a fight. Doesn't make clear that Rice's boyfriend responded to their argument by knocking her unconscious with a punch. And then, rather than worrying about that, instead dragging her body along the floor as though it were normal.

Anyway, to clarify for Kath: Rice was the girlfriend of a (now former) NFL player. He beat her unconscious on video. People found out and got upset at him. She's now furious because it's nobody's business if he beats her, because she loves him, in fact loves him so much that after that knocking-out incident she made it up to him by marrying him.

I'm not normally interested enough to be appalled by the normal american celebrity gossip stuff, but this one makes even me shake my head in despair.]
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But the river tripped on her by and by, lapping
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I'se so silly to be flowing but I no canna stay!

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jal
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Re: Cheese that smells

Post by jal »

Salmoneus wrote:The most natural syntactic reading is probably:
"Janay Rice blames the media for [the media] feeling embarrassed and hurt after a video was leaked showing [NFL star Janay Rice] punching [the media] in a lift". Obviously, though, the semantics there don't fit.
I think in this case, initial gardenpathing is prevented by "feeling" being semantically impossible to refer to "media". If it would've said "Janay blames the media for attacking her boyfriend", and it turns out that the media caused her to attack her boyfriend, then it would be different. As for the second possible garden path "the NFL star", yeah, that's a strange use of a definite article, but the "her" further on immediately corrects that reading.


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Salmoneus
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Re: Cheese that smells

Post by Salmoneus »

But that's the point, isn't it? The syntax suggests one thing, but context (like 'NFL players are all male') rules that thing out.

This isn't the "pun" thread, after all - there don't have to be two perfectly sensible meanings.
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But the river tripped on her by and by, lapping
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I'se so silly to be flowing but I no canna stay!

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