Re: USAGE: Garden paths

J Matthew Pearson wrote:
>   The poll [conducted by CNN] was inconclusive
>   The man [bitten on the leg by a snake] died of his wound
>   Houses [built at the turn of the century] are not up to code
Ah!  But there's a difference - the first two contain a "by" phrase
(and, also, the second has a different form than if it were active -
bitten instead of bit), and the third has no chance of ambiguity as
"build" cannot be interpreted as intransitive.  In my idiolect, a
relative clause is REQUIRED in certain cases, such as transitive verbs
that may be intransitive (like race) or verbs that may take nouns or
verb phrases as objects (like "suspect" or "believe").  So, my idiolect
would not permit "The horse raced past the barn fell down" or another
example I've seen "Sherlock never suspected the beautiful woman was an
heiress" (or something to that effect).  Both of those require a
relative pronoun in my idiolect, "The horse which was raced past the
barn fell down", "Sherlock never suspected THAT ..."  Like I said, I use
it more than most people, most people I know wouldn't use the relative.
That's one thing I liked when learning Spanish is that "que/quien" is
required in all relative clauses.

> Anyway, I think you're missing the point.  Nobody is arguing that garden path
> sentences sound natural.  Quite the contrary: there's clearly something wrong
> with them.  It's just that whatever is wrong with them has nothing to do with
> grammaticality.
Well, it may be grammatical in some dialects, but I'd consider it
hopelessly ungrammatical in MY idiolect, as I never produce that kind of
sentence.  I'm quite aware that other people do produce similar
sentences (altho I've never heard anything as difficult as "The horse
raced past the barn fell down" except given as an example of "garden
path" sentences!).  I understand the concept of "garden path" sentences,
it's just that that example isn't one in my idiolect, it's merely
ungrammatical.

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anything.  For partaking in any activity at all could threaten their
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