Language Can Lead Us Down The Garden Path

I am often tickled by the jokes built mainly of language – probably I am the type who is easily entertained – but that is about language that I love the most. I love the way language amuses me.

I remember my friend once said to me when we were about to have our appetiser salad: 'Lettuce [Let us] have lettuce!' (I waved a big no to that reprehensible joke). That being said, I believe language jokes are not made by happenstance. Speakers manipulate meanings of a word to establish a joke. In fact, some of us may have been very familiar with puns, which is a word play that exploits meanings to incite humour or wits. Perhaps one that can best illustrate this is as follows:

If the mushroom was a fun guy [fungi], then why did not they have the party at his house? ‘Cause there was not mush-room.

Get it? It is funny – or maybe not – because jokes like this really rest upon our knowledge of the language. But that is the best thing about language as you learn it. You will discover more than just a plethora of words and meanings, but also humour and wit in between.

Yet, that is not the only linguistic phenomenon that tickles my brain and by that, I would like to carry this amusing side of language a step further. Not only can a language entertain you on a single-word level (i.e. puns), but it can also do the same at a higher level i.e. sentence.

Some of us may have already known of the term 'the garden-path sentence'. For those who are not quite aware of this, whereas a sentence can be perfectly grammatical, its meaning remains ambiguous due to its structure. Try these classic examples:

a) The horse raced past the barn fell.

b) The complex houses married and single soldiers and their families.

Oh well, did the horse fall or did the barn? How could the complex houses get married? You would have been thrown midway through the sentence. Your brain would have gone wonky, and then probably shut itself off. Or some others may have just rest the case and say 'well, these are utterly ungrammatical!'

Rest not because essentially, the ambiguity lies within those sentences itself. What should have actually been phonologically represented there (or in layman’s terms, spoken)? See the following:

a') The horse (which was) raced past the barn, fell (down).

b') It’s the complex that houses married and single soldiers and their families.

Garden-path sentences have been of great interest in terms of language processing whether humans process this kind of sentences midway or near the end of the sentences. Some believe that humans process sentences word per word, while some believe that humans employ reanalysis in order to understand sentences of this nature. We are not sure which of these can best explain the phenomenon but one thing for sure, that is about it that actually tickles our brain!

So what can we deduce from this? Basically, when speakers use their language, more gets communicated than is said (to quote Yule, the legendary linguist). We do not speak in full to convey meaning as much of it is implicated. Hence to really comprehend this, the speaker on the other end must with proviso have the knowledge about the structure of the language. Otherwise, a joke is no longer a joke.

Learn and discover your language for only then can you make jokes (and appear funny to your friends). I think that is all for now, time flies like an arrow; fruit flies like a banana!

#Linguistics #Language #GardenPath #Sentences #Puns