A Garden Path Through a Confused Grammarian's Lexicon

Whilst today one can select from the theories of Stochastic Processes, Con-Spiracies of varying degrees of malevolence, Chaotic Dynamics, or simply pure Nihilism in order to explain away the seemingly un-caring randomness of the universe, in ancient days Men had contrived Deities whose purposes seemed to be divine emodiments of capricious urges and malicious pranks¹. The Norse painted their trickster god as alternately a figure of malicious rage, a cunning techno-logy innovator, or a mischievous relief side kick³; While the Coyote figure in many native american stories apprehends a more hapless stance, acting typically out of selfish urges and often suffering many comical slapstick mis-fortunes as a result of his deceits⁵.

The point being, that in order to console ourselves with various aspects of un-predictability, it is often helpful to Name this phenomona, a process by which we come to Know it, and accustom ourselves to it's existence. This Action of Naming suffuses our lives to such a degree that we often over-look it's omni-presence, and I consider it a part of my Duties as a Web-Logger to assist in drawing attention to this uniquely human phenomenon. Leading us by quite the elliptical garden path to today's subject at hand: unpredictability and chaos in sentence structure.

A Garden Path sentence is a grammatically correct sentence subject to multiple divergent parsings depending on how the reader chooses to interpret the various clauses. Typically this is a result of words that seem to function simultaneously as multiple forms of speech within various interpretive contexts of the sentence. Examples include:

The old man whistling tunes pianos.

The tomcat curled up on the cushion seemed friendly.

The cotton clothing is made of grows in Mississippi.

The man who hunts ducks out on weekends.

The Eskimos can fish in a new factory three miles away from sea.

He gave the child the dog bit a band-aid.

We painted the wall with cracks.

Fat people eat accumulates.

The prime number few.

A Paraprosdokian is a figure of speech that begins normally enough but at some point veers off course into a differing context, causing the reader to re-interpret the meaning of the first clause. Famous examples include:

"If I am reading this graph correctly, I'd be very surprised."

"I haven't slept for ten days, because that would be too long."

"She looks as though she had been poured into her clothes, and forgot to say when."

"My father said, 'I'll miss you son,' because I had broken the sights off of his rifle."

"Have you ever tried just sitting down with your children, turning the tv off, and hitting them?"

"Laudandus, ornandus, tollendus⁶."

"I like going to the park and watching the children run around because they don't know I'm using blanks."

Antanaclasis (or often, antistasis) are sentences wherein a key word or phrase is repeated in a way that takes advantage of a word's multiple meanings to change the expected interpretation of the sentence. Naturally, I have clarifying specimens:

"Time flies like an arrow, fruit flies like a banana."

"Your argument is sound, nothing but sound."

"We must indeed hang together, or most assuredly we shall all hang separately."

"Those who are not fired with enthusiasm will be fired, with enthusiasm."

Syllepsis, or semantic zeugma, is a deliberate inflection of grammatical rules generally used by lyricicists and poets (not to mention classical hard boiled noir authors and Groucho Marx) for it's disorienting yet pleasing effect. The zeugma in general is a series of phrases joined by a single common word; this semantic zeugma occurs when the fulcrum word has multiple interpretations which are exploited by the multiple phrases. And who would I be if I did not have revealing exemplifications?

"Oh, flowers are as common here, Miss Fairfax, as people are in London."

"[The rat] returned in haste and flames to its original hideout."

"When he asked "What in Heaven," she made no reply, up her mind, and a dash for the door."

"You are free to execute your laws, and your citizens, how you see fit."

"You can leave in a taxi. If you can't get a taxi, you can leave in a huff. If that's too soon, you can leave in a minute and a huff."

"Monica had exploded, and I had a mystery, and pieces of her pancreas, on my hands."

I hope this linguistic gallery has been both amusing and instructional. Perhaps for purposes of merriment you can infuse one of your daily memorandums with a handful of self-constructed exemplars of the above listed sentence forms and watch the con-fusion and chaos in your life increase, secure in the knowledge that this ataxia can be laid squarely at your own doorstep.

¹Einstein famously said "God does not play dice with the universe," and while it is quite clear to anyone familiar with the history and past-times of the but lately (in historical terms) promoted War-God of the Israelites that He certainly wasn't a Gamer (not in the strict "Games of Chance" context perhaps, but his antagonism with The Antagonist can certainly be interpreted as a Zero-Sum Game² per se, it is not suitable to conclude that No God plays dice with the universe. Einstein may be forgiven for his assumption though, not being trained the methods of mystical meta-mathematics.

²see Von Neumann's Theory of Games and Economic Behavior.

³see various myths concerning the mis-adventures of Thor and Loki that appear to be the originals of the mis-matched buddy comedy genre so beloved by Shane Black and his descendants ("Someone has stolen the Thunder God's might hammer Mjolner, and to get it back he is going to have to join forces with the notorious half-Jotun⁴ loose cannon Loki and together go undercover as goddesses betrothed to Frost Giants" for further details see Þrymskviða...)

⁴essentially an ethnic minority, at least in Asgard at the time.

⁵not entirely unlike Chuck Jones' noted Wile E Coyote.

⁶"He must be praised, decorated, and tolerated."