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Comment by kjhughes | Hacker News Reader

It's a garden-path sentence [1]. Garden-path sentences have ambiguous parses that typically require backtracking to correct earlier misinterpretations.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Garden-path_sentence

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Well, the words "B.C." and "buried" are interpreted correctly in a grammatical sense either way. "Paris man with baguette" might be misleading if they're in Texas, but that's outside the scope of garden path sentences.

Only "Amazon packages" falls into the right realm. But is that enough to qualify as a garden path sentence? Personally, I wouldn't say so.

It definitely is. Because you think Amazon is a place, a noun, and thus you think "packages" is a verb - the woman is packaging something. Then you realize Amazon is a brand adjective. Definitely garden path.

But it's only those two words. You only have to go back one word, "packages".

I understand how the misinterpretation happens, but I personally don't think a single misinterpreted word is enough to make a garden path sentence.

I mean, not to be argumentative, but your personal opinion doesn't change the definition of the term. The first example on Wikipedia's article on it is "the old man the boat." Again, that's only one word, but it turns out there isn't a minimum word-backtracking-count to qualify.

I didn't know there was a name for this, thanks!

In the particular case of headlines, where this arises more often thanks to their need for brevity at the cost of clarity, linguists sometimes call these "Crash blossoms" from the naming example "Violinist linked to JAL crash blossoms".

Not only a name, there's also an xkcd! https://xkcd.com/2793/

After reading that my brain will never be the same if I remember it though it's not guaranteed at my age.

Oh wow that took some serious effort and help from explainxkcd to make any sense of.

Did you have caps lock enabled? :-)

"xkcd.com is best viewed with Netscape Navigator 4.0 or below on a Pentium 3±1 emulated in Javascript on an Apple IIGS at a screen resolution of 1024x1. Please enable your ad blockers, disable high-heat drying, and remove your device from Airplane Mode and set it to Boat Mode. For security reasons, please leave caps lock on while browsing."

I think it's not a garden-path sentence because the sentence would be grammatically correct in the prehistoric/rainforest parse and even make some sort of sense.

Of course the meaning would be extremely weird - why would a prehistoric woman be buried with grave goods she refused and how would we even be able to know? - but I've honestly on par with the headlines and articles often posted here.

I'd definitely read it.

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