Garden-path sentence

A garden-path sentence is a grammatically correct sentence that starts in such a way that a reader's most likely interpretation will be incorrect; the reader is lured into a parse that turns out to be a dead end or yields a clearly unintended meaning. Garden path refers to the saying "to be led down [or up] the garden path", meaning to be deceived, tricked, or seduced. In A Dictionary of Modern English Usage (1926), Fowler describes such sentences as unwittingly laying a "false scent".

Such a sentence leads the reader toward a seemingly familiar meaning that is actually not the one intended. It is a special type of sentence that creates a momentarily ambiguous interpretation because it contains a word or phrase that can be interpreted in multiple ways, causing the reader to begin to believe that a phrase will mean one thing when in reality it means something else. When read, the sentence seems ungrammatical, makes almost no sense, and often requires rereading so that its meaning may be fully understood after careful parsing. Though these sentences are grammatically correct, such sentences are syntactically non-standard (or incorrect) as evidenced by the need for re-reading and careful parsing. Garden-path sentences are not usually desirable in writing that is intended to communicate clearly.

This is a common example that has been the subject of psycholinguistic research and has been used to test the capabilities of artificial intelligence efforts. The difficulty in correctly parsing the sentence results from the fact that readers tend to interpret old as an adjective. Reading the, they expect a noun or an adjective to follow, and when they then read old followed by man they assume that the phrase the old man is to be interpreted as determiner – adjective – noun. When readers encounter another the following the supposed noun man (rather than the expected verb, as in e.g., The old man washed the boat), they are forced to re-analyze the sentence. As with other examples, one explanation for the initial misunderstanding by the reader is that a sequence of words or phrases tends to be analyzed in terms of a frequent pattern: in this case: determiner – adjective – noun. Rephrased, the sentence could be rewritten as "Those who man the boat are old."

This is another commonly cited example. Like the previous sentence, the initial parse is to read the complex houses as a noun phrase, but the complex houses married does not make semantic sense (only people can marry) and the complex houses married and single makes no sense at all (after married and..., the expectation is another verb to form a compound predicate). The correct parsing is The complex [noun phrase] houses [verb] married and single soldiers [noun phrase] and their families [noun phrase].

This frequently used, classic example of a garden-path sentence is attributed to Thomas Bever. The sentence is hard to parse because raced can be interpreted as a finite verb or as a passive participle. The reader initially interprets raced as the main verb in the simple past, but when the reader encounters fell, they are forced to re-analyze the sentence, concluding that raced is being used as a passive participle and horse is the direct object of the subordinate clause. The sentence could be replaced by "The horse that was raced past the barn fell", where that was raced past the barn tells the reader which horse is under discussion. Such examples of initial ambiguity resulting from a "reduced relative with [a] potentially intransitive verb" ("The horse raced past the barn fell.") can be contrasted with the lack of ambiguity for a non-reduced relative ("The horse that was raced past the barn fell.") or with a reduced relative with an unambiguously transitive verb ("The horse frightened in the barn fell."). As with other examples, one explanation for the initial misunderstanding by the reader is that a sequence of phrases tends to be analyzed in terms of the frequent pattern: agent – action – patient.

Many people will initially parse this sentence as referring to corrupt police officers. The correct interpretation is for "Police" to be a verb, and "The corrupt" to be a group of people. The sentence can be rephrased as: "officers in the military are frequently policed by the corrupt in poor countries."

"本食堂欢迎新老师生前来就餐。"

This sentence can be interpreted in two ways: