take a walk with me

In linguistics, there is a type of sentence known as a Garden Path Sentence. This is when you read the sentence, expecting it to fit into a certain pattern, but it doesn't. So you have to go back to the beginning and try to reconstruct, re-decode the elements in order to figure out the meaning (ie, turn back on the garden path). We are learning about the theory in my psycholinguistics class, and I think it's really fun to figure out what the real meaning is, mainly because I NEVER can. Someone always has to explain to me what the sentence means. Maybe my parser is blocked. Who knows? Regardless, I wanted to share the joy of Garden Path sentences. Try to figure these out:

• The horse raced past the barn fell.
• The log floated past the bridge sank.
• Fat people eat accumulates.
• The old man the boats.
• Because the little boy hid the ice cream that his little brother wanted to eat melted.