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A garden path sentence, such as "The old man the boat," 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 unintended. Garden path sentences are used in psycholinguistics to illustrate the fact that when human beings read, they process language one word at a time. "Garden path" refers to the saying "to be led down the garden path", meaning to be deceived, tricked, or seduced. As a person reads a garden path sentence, the reader builds up a structure of meaning one word at a time. At some point, it becomes clear to the reader that the next word or phrase cannot be incorporated into the structure built up thus far; it is inconsistent with the path down which they have been led. Garden path sentences are less common in spoken communication because the prosodic qualities of speech (such as the stress and the tone of voice) often serve to resolve ambiguities in the written text. This phenomenon is important in theoretical linguistics, and is discussed at length by literary theorist Stanley Fish. Simple ambiguity does not produce a garden path sentence; rather, there must be an overwhelmingly more common meaning associated with the early words in a sentence than is involved in a correct understanding. Whether a sentence is misleading can thus be a matter of degree, and will depend on the idiolect of the reader or listener, who may be more or less familiar with particular word meanings. ==Similar phenomena== Garden path sentences are related to paraprosdokian, where the latter part of an utterance or discourse is unexpected and causes the reader or listener to have to think about what they previously heard in a new light. A common example is a pun employing antanaclasis: a word or phrase appears; it then reappears and is (at first) understood as a grammatical or rhetorical parallel to what had gone before;〔Common parallel constructions that initiate such expectations are the rhetorical devices of anaphora (not to be confused with the linguistic term of the same name) and epistrophe.〕 however, the rest of the sentence makes it clear that the second use must be different from the first. * ''Time flies like an arrow; fruit flies like a banana.'' : A standard reader begins to put the first clause together conveying the vague sense that "time passes rather quickly". The concrete nature of fruit actually strengthens the imagery, producing a stronger notion of an actual speeding arrow. The obviousness of fruit flying like a member of its class and the poor aerodynamic properties of bananas, however, force a reappraisal: "fruit flies" goes from being its clause's subject and verb to an adjective and its referent, "fruit flies"; "like" similarly goes from its meaning as a marker of similes to its meaning as a verb. This new understanding can't apply to the first clause ("time flies" not being a kind of fly), and the two phrases are recognized as unrelated. : (For the classically minded, the first half ''also'' functions as a garden path sentence. "Time ''flies''" is a traditional English translation of the Latin proverb ''tempus fugit'' distilled from Virgil's quote ''fugit irreparābile tempus'': "it ''flees'', irretrievable time". This confounding of the senses of "flee" and "fly" appears as early as Old English〔''Oxford English Dictionary'', 1st ed. "(fly, v. )". Oxford University Press (Oxford), 1896.〕 but Virgil's image is one of escape on foot. The use of an arrow in the simile, however, jerks such a reader back to the airborne sense of flight.) 抄文引用元・出典: フリー百科事典『 ウィキペディア(Wikipedia)』 ■ウィキペディアで「garden path sentence」の詳細全文を読む スポンサード リンク
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