Relay-Version: version B 2.10 5/3/83; site utzoo.UUCP
Path: utzoo!linus!philabs!seismo!harpo!ihnp4!inuxc!pur-ee!uiucdcs!uicsl!dinitz
From: dinitz@uicsl.UUCP
Newsgroups: net.nlang
Subject: Re: Of garden paths... - (nf)
Message-ID: <4715@uiucdcs.UUCP>
Date: Tue, 27-Dec-83 22:31:40 EST
Article-I.D.: uiucdcs.4715
Posted: Tue Dec 27 22:31:40 1983
Date-Received: Fri, 6-Jan-84 01:45:15 EST
Lines: 35

#R:uicsl:8600033:uicsl:8600034:000:1752
uicsl!dinitz    Dec 27 09:18:00 1983

The full form of the expression is: to lead someone down the garden
path, only to slaughter them at the wall (presumably, all formal
gardens are enclosed by stone walls).  I am not familiar with the
expression's origin.  Garden path sentences are display exactly this
type of behaviour from the processing point of view -- you are led down
a garden path, thinking that you are parsing it correctly, until the
very last word, which reveals that the structure is drastically
different than you had been led to believe.

E.g.:   The horse raced past the barn ........................... fell.

My first encounter with the term was in connection with the paper which
describes the Marcus parser, PARSIFAL.  I don't know whether Marcus
coined the term himself, or borrowed it from the psychological or
linguistic literature.  He uses the evidence that English speakers get
hung up by such sentences as justification for certain features of his
parser.  Conversely, he claims PARSIFAL will get hung up by the same
garden path sentences as humans (though I have heard grumblings that
this is not exactly true in all cases).

Recently, usage of the term "garden path" has become sloppy around our
lab.  Some people have been using it to describe sentences which are
merely ambiguous, rather than misleading.  I suspect this is because
the term is correctly used to describe sentences which are ambiguous,
so long as they don't seem ambiguous until you hear the end.  One weak
example is:
	They are flying ......................................... planes.
>From there I guess it is just a small jump to calling any ambiguous
sentence a garden path.  As a technical term passes into common usage,
we can expect it to lose precision -- such is life.

Rick Dinitz