zompist bboard

kanejam wrote:Closing various fisheries to set nets to protect dolphins encouraged

I don't even know what's going on there.

I'm going to guess...

It is encouraged for various fisheries to limit/prevent/be closed to "set nets", and this will protect dolphins. (where a "set net" is a certain type of fishing net)

That's a doozy, though...

Maybe they're recommending closing fisheries to put out nets that would somehow help protect dolphins?

EDIT: Nope, never mind. Apparently, you're right!

Ah, I didn't get the 'closing to' reading and couldn't parse it. It's still pretty ugly.

Oh OK, I guess there is an ambiguity there between [closing to] [set nets] and [closing] [to [set nets]]...

Also, "set" can be a verb...

Wall Street Journal headline this morning: "New York Fed Eyes Its New Leader"

I initially read it as "New York fed eyes [to] its new leader" and was deeply concerned...

Omg, so did I!

alynnidalar wrote:Wall Street Journal headline this morning: "New York Fed Eyes Its New Leader"

I initially read it as "New York fed eyes [to] its new leader" and was deeply concerned...

Whereas actually it's saying that New York fed its new leader to some terrifying carnivorous eyes.

vijay: yes, that's what my brackets were trying to indicate.

Ah, OK.

OK, why's that one ambiguous or confusing? Because of who did the shooting?

[shooting dead] [black man] vs. [shooting] [dead black man]

Exactly. And when I originally saw it, it was actually arranged as:
US cop sacked for shooting
dead black man

Which emphasises the wrong construction. Although it's also the syntactically normal construction: if you see the headline "man paints blue house", you assume that the house begins blue, rather than ends up blue.

[there's also of course an ambiguity with "shooting", as the syntactic object can be the target ("cop shoots black man"), the projectile ("machine shoots tennis balls"), or often the weapon ("child shoots machinegun"), though the pedants would prefer "fire" for the third option there]

I'm still more confused by the confusion than I am by the headline. I still don't get it. I'll try thinking about it later, though.

Vijay wrote:I'm still more confused by the confusion than I am by the headline. I still don't get it.

Sure you get it. Either the police shot a man that was already dead (i.e. fired bullets in a corpse), or they shot a man that was still alive, killing him ("they shot him dead").


JAL

Ah, OK, now I get it! Thanks!

EDIT: I think the way I intuitively read that headline is actually different from both of those interpretations, i.e. there is a black man who is now dead, a cop shot him, and now the cop has been sacked, regardless of whether the cop shot him before or after he died.

Vijay wrote:EDIT: I think the way I intuitively read that headline is actually different from both of those interpretations, i.e. there is a black man who is now dead, a cop shot him, and now the cop has been sacked, regardless of whether the cop shot him before or after he died.

You're right, that's a third interpretation!


JAL

This one is prone to misinterpretation because for resultatives in English the resultative adjective normally comes after the object, or the resultative adjective is separated from the noun by a determiner.

Sinclair Broadcasting under fire for fake news script (Salon)

Not a headline, but something that really confused me:

www.goodseattickets.com

First I read it as "goods E at tickets", then as "goods eat tickets".

Qwynegold wrote:http://www.goodseattickets.com

There's so much more where that came from :).


JAL

Porn star's attorney alleging Trump affair to offer reward (WaPo)

First three times reading this, it was just word salad.

I feel like that almost is word salad. (Even after starting to read the article).

Vijay wrote:I feel like that almost is word salad. (Even after starting to read the article).

I think they wanted to avoid "Porn star alleging Trump afair's attorney", which wouldn't be much more comprehensible, but at least would parse right...


JAL

Hither Green burglar death flowers 'an insult'

Not a garden path, but I was pretty confused about it until I read the article.