List of linguistic example sentences

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The following is a partial list of linguistic example sentences illustrating various linguistic phenomena.

Contents

Ambiguity

Different types of ambiguity which are possible in language.

Lexical ambiguity

Demonstrations of words which have multiple meanings dependent on context.

Syntactic ambiguity

Demonstrations of ambiguity between alternative syntactic structures underlying a sentence.

Syntactic ambiguity, incrementality, and local coherence

Demonstrations of how incremental and (at least partially) local syntactic parsing leads to infelicitous constructions and interpretations.

Scope ambiguity and anaphora resolution

Embedding

Punctuation

Punctuation can be used to introduce ambiguity or misunderstandings where none needed to exist. One well known example, [17] for comedic effect, is from A Midsummer Night's Dream by William Shakespeare (ignoring the punctuation provides the alternate reading).

Enter QUINCE for the Prologue
Prologue
If we offend, it is with our good will.
That you should think, we come not to offend,
But with good will. To show our simple skill,
That is the true beginning of our end.
Consider then we come but in despite.
We do not come as minding to content you,
Our true intent is. All for your delight
We are not here. That you should here repent you,
The actors are at hand and by their show
You shall know all that you are like to know.
—ACT V, Scene i

Word order

Ending sentence with preposition

Some prescriptive grammar prohibits "preposition stranding": ending sentences with prepositions. [18]

Avoidance

  • This is the sort of English up with which I will not put. (Attributed by Gowers to Winston Churchill. There is no convincing evidence that Churchill said this, and good reason to believe that he did not.) [19] [20] The sentence "does not demonstrate the absurdity of using [prepositional phrase] fronting instead of stranding; it merely illustrates the ungrammaticality resulting from fronting something that is not a constituent". [21] [22]

Compound use

  • "A father of a little boy goes upstairs after supper to read to his son, but he brings the wrong book. The boy says, 'What did you bring that book that I don't want to be read to out of up for?'" [23]

Neurolinguistics

Sentences with unexpected endings.

Comparative illusion:

Combinatorial complexity

Demonstrations of sentences which are unlikely to have ever been said, although the combinatorial complexity of the linguistic system makes them possible.

Semantics and context

Demonstrations of sentences where the semantic interpretation is bound to context or knowledge of the world.

Relevance conditionals

Conditionals where the prejacent ("if" clause) is not strictly required for the consequent to be true.

Non-English examples

Ojibwe

Latin

Mandarin Chinese

Japanese

Czech

Korean

German

Dutch

Persian

A famous example for lexical ambiguity in Persian is the following sentence: [42]

بخشش لازم نیست اعدامش کنید

It can be read either as:

which means "Forgiveness! no need to execute him/her"

Or as:

which means "Forgiveness not needed! execute her/him"

Russian

Polish

Finnish

Indonesian

See also

Related Research Articles

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<span class="mw-page-title-main">English passive voice</span> Grammatical voice in the English language

In English, the passive voice is marked by a subject that is followed by a stative verb complemented by a past participle. For example:

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<span class="mw-page-title-main">English prepositions</span> Prepositions in the English language

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<span class="mw-page-title-main">English adjectives</span> Adjectives in the English language

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References

  1. ↑ Han, Bianca-Oana (2015). "On Language Peculiarities: when language evolves that much that speakers find it strange" (PDF). Philologia (18): 140. ISSN   1582-9960. Archived (PDF) from the original on 14 October 2015.
  2. ↑ Sterbenz, Christina (2014). "9 Sentences That Are Perfectly Accurate". Business Insider Australia. Archived from the original on 21 August 2014. Retrieved 10 June 2018.
  3. ↑ "Operator Jumble" (PDF). ACM-ICPC Live Archive. Baylor University. Archived (PDF) from the original on 9 March 2015. Retrieved 10 October 2015.
  4. ↑ Wieringa, Moore & Barnes (1993). Procedure Writing: Principles and Practices. Battelle Press. p. 54. ISBN   0-935470-68-9.
  5. ↑ Brewer, Ebenezer Cobham (1953). Dictionary of Phrase and Fable. Harper. p. 896.
  6. ↑ Gardner, Martin (2006). Aha! A Two Volume Collection: Aha! Gotcha Aha! Insight. The Mathematica Association of America. p. 141. ISBN   978-0-88385-551-5.
  7. ↑ Snicket, Lemony (13 October 2006). The End . HarperCollins. pp. 45–46. ISBN   978-0-06-441016-8 . Retrieved 3 November 2022.
  8. ↑ Landau, Iddo (2022). The Oxford Handbook of Meaning in Life. Oxford University Press. p. 345. ISBN   978-0-19-006350-4.
  9. ↑ Jurafsky, Daniel; Martin, James H. (2000). Speech and Language Processing: An Introduction to Natural Language Processing, Computational Linguistics, and Speech Recognition: an introduction to natural language processing, computational linguistics, and speech recognition. Upper Saddle River, N.J.: Prentice Hall. pp. 4–5. ISBN   0-13-095069-6.
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  11. ↑ Fodor, Jerry; Lepore, Ernie (2004). "Out of Context". Proceedings and Addresses of the American Philosophical Association. 78 (2): 83–84. doi:10.2307/3219726. ISSN   0065-972X. JSTOR   3219726. S2CID   18454403. Groucho said, as everybody knows, 'I shot an elephant in my pajamas.' This sets up the infamous joke: 'How an elephant got into my pajamas I can't imagine. [Laughter].' What, exactly, happened here? We take the following to be untendentious as far as it goes: the conventions of English are in force, and they entail that there are two ways to read the set-up sentence. Either it expresses the thought (I, in my pajamas, shot an elephant) or it expresses the thought (I) (shot (an elephant in my pajamas)).
  12. ↑ Tabor, Whitney; Galantucci, Bruno; Richardson, Daniel (2004). "Effects of merely local syntactic coherence on sentence processing" (PDF). Journal of Memory and Language. 50 (4): 355–370. CiteSeerX   10.1.1.77.3953 . doi:10.1016/j.jml.2004.01.001. ISSN   0749-596X. Archived from the original (PDF) on 1 July 2015.
  13. ↑ Christianson, Kiel; Hollingworth, Andrew; Halliwell, John F.; Ferreira, Fernanda (2001). "Thematic Roles Assigned along the Garden Path Linger". Cognitive Psychology. 42 (4): 368–407. CiteSeerX   10.1.1.580.9677 . doi:10.1006/cogp.2001.0752. ISSN   0010-0285. PMID   11368528. S2CID   4130879.
  14. ↑ Barker, Ken (2 October 1999). "CSI 5386: Donkey Sentence Discussion". University of Ottawa School of Information Technology and Engineering. Archived from the original on 16 May 2007. 'Every farmer who owns a donkey beats it' . . . : there is some single thing Y in the universe such that for every X in the universe if X is a farmer and Y is a donkey and X owns Y, then X beats Y. So the problem with the donkey sentence is that the scope of the variable corresponding to the donkey must be contained within the antecedent of the implication to prevent requiring the unconditional existence of the donkey. But the scope of the donkey variable must contain the consequent of the implication to allow the anaphoric reference!
  15. ↑ Kempen, Gerard; Vosse, Theo (1989). "Incremental Syntactic Tree Formation in Human Sentence Processing: a Cognitive Architecture Based on Activation Decay and Simulated Annealing" (PDF). Connection Science. 1 (3): 282. doi:10.1080/09540098908915642. hdl: 11858/00-001M-0000-0012-25F8-8 . ISSN   1360-0494. Archived (PDF) from the original on 14 October 2015. The rat the cat the dog bit chased escaped.
  16. 1 2 Braine, David (2014). Language and Human Understanding. CUA Press. p. 614. ISBN   9780813221748.
  17. ↑ "A Midsummer Night's Dream". CliffsNotes. Retrieved 18 October 2018.
  18. ↑ Pullum, Geoffrey K.; Huddleston, Rodney (2012) [1st pub. 2002]. "Prepositions and preposition phrases § 4.1 Preposition stranding: What was she referring to?". In Huddleston, Rodney D.; Pullum, Geoffrey K. (eds.). The Cambridge Grammar of the English Language. 5th printing. Cambridge University Press. p. 627. ISBN   978-0-521-43146-0. LCCN   2001025630. OCLC   46641801. OL   4984064W. The 'rule' was apparently created ex nihilo in 1672 by the essayist John Dryden, who took exception to Ben Jonson's phrase the bodies that those souls were frighted from (1611). Dryden was in effect suggesting that Jonson should have written the bodies from which those souls were frighted, but he offers no reason for preferring this to the original.
  19. ↑ "Famous Quotations and Stories". The Churchill Centre. March 2009. Archived from the original on 10 September 2015. Retrieved 10 October 2015. 'This is the kind of tedious [sometimes "pedantic"] nonsense up with which I will not put!' . . . Verdict: An invented phrase put in Churchill's mouth
  20. ↑ Zimmer, Ben (12 December 2004). "A misattribution no longer to be put up with". Language Log. Archived from the original on 7 September 2015. Retrieved 10 October 2015.
  21. ↑ Pullum, Geoffrey K.; Huddleston, Rodney (2012) [1st pub. 2002]. "Prepositions and preposition phrases § 4.1 Preposition stranding: What was she referring to?". In Huddleston, Rodney D.; Pullum, Geoffrey K. (eds.). The Cambridge Grammar of the English Language. 5th printing. Cambridge University Press. p. 629. ISBN   978-0-521-43146-0. LCCN   2001025630. OCLC   46641801. OL   4984064W. This example is based on a much-quoted joke attributed to Sir Winston Churchill, who is said to have annotated some clumsy evasion of stranding in a document with the remark: This is the sort of English up with which I will not put. Unfortunately, the joke fails because it depends on a mistaken grammatical analysis: in I will not put up with this sort of English the sequence up with this sort of English is not a constituent, up being a separate complement of the verb (in the traditional analysis it is an adverb). Churchill's example thus does not demonstrate the absurdity of using PP fronting instead of stranding: it merely illustrates the ungrammaticality resulting from fronting something which is not a constituent.
  22. ↑ Pullum, Geoffrey K. (8 December 2004). "A Churchill story up with which I will no longer put". Language Log. Archived from the original on 10 September 2015.
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  29. ↑ "Language Log » If you think about it".
  30. ↑ Valentine, J. Randolph (2001). "18.9.1.1. Yes/No (Polar) Question". Nishnaabemwin Reference Grammar (in English and Ojibwa). University of Toronto Press. p. 978. ISBN   978-0-8020-8389-0. LCCN   2002284190. OCLC   46625840. OL   3585700M. Gdaa-naanaanaa, Aanaa, naa? . . . 'We should fetch Anna, shouldn't we?'
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  32. ↑ Alberic of Trois-Fontaines: Chronica Albrici Monachi Trium Fontium (1232-1251), ed. Paulus Scheffer-Boichorst, in Monumenta Germaniae Historica: Scriptorum, vol. 23 (Hanover, 1874), p. 898..
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  35. ↑ Collier, John Payne (1825). "Edward II". In Reed, Isaac; Gilchrist, Octavius (eds.). A Selection of Old Plays in Twelve Volumes. Vol. II. London: Septimus Prowett. p. 393. LCCN   12002796. OCLC   2075486. Sir J. Harington has an Epigram (L. i. E. 83.) 'Of writing with double pointing,' which is thus introduced. 'It is said that King Edward, of Carnarvon, lying at Berkeley Castle, prisoner, a cardinal wrote to his keeper, Edwardum occidere noli, timere bonum est, which being read with the point at timere, it cost the king his life.'
  36. ↑ Addis, John, Junior (18 July 1868). "Adam of Orleton's Saying". Replies. Notes and Queries . 4. s4-II (29): 66. doi:10.1093/nq/s4-II.29.66c. ISSN   0029-3970. ADDIS18071868.{{cite journal}}: CS1 maint: multiple names: authors list (link)
  37. ↑ 隔壁小谁 (1 July 2010). "老外学中文都要从 "妈妈骑马马慢妈妈骂马" 开始么" [Do all foreigners learning Chinese start with "māma qí mǎ, mǎ màn, māma mà mǎ" ("Mother is riding a horse, the horse is slow, mother scolds the horse")?]. Baidu (in Chinese). Archived from the original on 3 March 2016. 妈妈骑马马慢妈妈骂马
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  44. ↑ "Tekoäly ja luonnollisen kielen käsittelyn mikropalvelut NLP Cloud API:a hyödyntäen". 2022.
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