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"I never said she stole my money" has 7 different meanings depending on the stressed word
Just thought that was interesting.
- cperciva 18y agoYou get different implied meanings by stressing different words in the famous (Buffalo)+ sentences, too.
- norimaki 18y agoTHE buffalo FROM Buffalo WHO ARE buffaloed BY buffalo FROM Buffalo ALSO buffalo THE buffalo FROM Buffalo.
- badger7 18y agoJust had to spell this out to a colleague, so thought I may as well post it. It should be "didn't say", rather than "never said", but the gist is the same ;) I didn't say she stole my money - someone else said it I didn't say she stole my money - I didn't say it I didn't say she stole my money - I only implied it I didn't say she stole my money - I said someone did, not necessarily her I didn't say she stole my money - I considered it borrowed, even though she didn't ask I didn't say she stole my money - only that she stole money I didn't say she stole my money - she stole stuff which cost me money to replace
- jlees 18y agoRe: #7 - She could have stolen your heart :'(
- graemep 18y agoThe stress adds information. #2 is the basic meaning (it is true for all of the others as well), a stress on any other word adds information about what you did way/imply. Incidentally, some still bear alternative interpretations: e.g., #3 could be interpreted as "I only thought it".
- gabrielroth 18y ago#2 has a more specific meaning: it implies that someone else has claimed that you did say she stole your money.
- stcredzero 18y agoAccording to training I got as a volunteer in Washington, this drives native Vietnamese speakers crazy. I think it may confuse older Koreans as well. My grandma didn't get it at all. I think this is a part of what makes English one of the best languages to tell a lie in. Pauses can similarly change the meaning. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eats,_Shoots_&_Leaves http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eats,_Shoots_&_Leaves
- dws 18y agoJerry Weinberg uses this technique in "Exploring Requirements: Quality Before Design" as a technique for exploring vague requirements. When you get a short verbal requirement thrown at you, repeat it back with different words stressed, and ask whether that's the right meaning or what information might be missing. It's a great technique for flushing out extra information and avoiding misunderstandings.
- antiismist 18y agoWhile we're on the topic of wordsmithing, "verbal" means using words. You probably mean "oral".
- Oxryly 18y agoSounds difficult to pull off without sounding like a jerk.
- andreyf 18y agoYup, another favorite of mine from linguistics is: "We gave the monkeys the bananas because they were [adjective]" What is "they" referring to, and the adjective describing? Well, it depends - "ripe" would describe bananas, "hungry" would describe monkeys. The syntax alone is ambiguous!
- serhei 18y agoWell, you could of course change the context. If we glom "We didn't give the rhinoceroces anything because they weren't ripe for a feeding, but ..." onto the front of your sentence then "ripe" starts to apply to the monkeys.
- jpwagner 18y ago"They gave the monkeys the bananas because they were [adjective]" now it can describe a third noun...
- deleted 18y ago[deleted]
- jodrellblank 18y ago"They gave the monkeys the bananas in bunches because they were [adjective]"
- gwc 18y agoI had an English teacher in high school who was highly attentive to this sort of construct. He would return many a paper with "VPR" marks sprinkled throughout for 'vague pronoun reference' and points deducted accordingly. Certainly a common error.
- jedc 18y agoWhile I hated these teachers when they were doing this, I've grown to appreciate their advice. I wish more did stuff like this.
- 18y ago
- enomar 18y agoThis makes me think it might be easier to get humans to speak a language that computers can understand rather than trying to get computers to understand our current languages :)
- ricree 18y agoIt might be. I'm reminded of a story I read about Palm designing their early PDFs. At that point, they had only experienced marginal success interpreting written text. There were a lot of ambiguities, and the actual style varied a lot from person to person, so it tended to fail outside of carefully controlled tests. Eventually, someone hit on the idea of forcing the users into a custom set of symbols that was close enough to normal to be usable, but was different enough that it forced everyone into a common style that was easier to parse. Of course, the tricky part is to come up with a method that is expressive enough to be useful without ending up with one of those "natural" programming languages.
- ambulatorybird 18y agoThe Structure and Interpretation of Computer Programs touches upon this. Somewhere in chapter 4, they implement a nondeterministic interpreter with CPS and then use it to (among other things) find all possible parses of sentences such as these.
- frankus 18y agoThe phrase "Time flies like an arrow" is another example. "Time flies" could be a type of insect with an affinity for a particular arrow (or each for its own arrow), or you might be being instructed to measure a fly's speed in the manner that one measures that of an arrow (or to time only those flies that resemble an arrow), or it could have the conventional metaphorical meaning. cf. "Fruit flies like a banana."
- ALee 18y agoGarden path sentences along with other linguistic puzzles are awesome (and this little puzzle is the reason why Noam Chomsky and other linguists can all be cultural critics): http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Garden_path_sentence http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Garden_path_sentence
- yan 18y agoDiscussions of garden path sentences deserve a reference to Emo Philips: http://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Emo_Philips http://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Emo_Philips
- ashot 18y agowhen doing nlp is there a standardized system or practice for encoding this data (which word(s) where emphasized)? what is the logical framework for this? at first I thought you could only have one emphasized word per statement, but though its a bit more nuanced but you can also have two at a time (ie "my" and "money")
- knowtheory 18y agoYeah, this stuff is done with what basically amounts to an annotated typed logic: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Focus_(linguistics) http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Focus_(linguistics)
- ashot 18y agothanks!
- tdonia 18y agoCreative creatives create creative creations, with language!
- jjs 18y agoUnlike the "buffalo" one, this sentence is at least parseable.
- raghus 18y agoThis is applicable to most sentences. For example: "Make Something People Want"
- banned_man_2_0 18y agoTechnically, there's an eighth: I didn't say she stole my money -- I said that person did, but he's a man.
- maw 18y agoMore than seven, since you can stress more than one word.
- sown 18y agoOne of my favorite examples of ambiguity when it comes to punctuation is the following "When hunting lions, hide in the bushes." vs. "When hunting, lions hide in the bushes."
- GMWeinberg 18y agoNice discussion, but doesn't explore nearly enough. As Don Gause and I showed in http://www.geraldmweinberg.com/Site/Exploring_Requirements.html http://www.geraldmweinberg.com/Site/Exploring_Requirements.h..., you can stress more than one word in a sentence. In fact, you can stress two, three, or any number up to the number of words in the sentence. This sounds really weird, but if you say these sentences out loud, you can make a different meaning from each variation. Try it: <i>I</i> <i>didn't</i> say she stole my money. That is, I was one of the few who didn't. I didn't <i>say</i> she <i>stole</i> my money. I wrote a letter about how she found my money. See if you can get all the way up to all 7 words stressed. There are lots of cases (which you can computer using the binomial theorem).
- tjogin 18y agoMaybe I'm missing something. Does this not apply to just about every sentence in every language?
- vilda 18y agoAdditionally, in Czech almost any permutation of words in a sentence is allowed. You can then get even more variances of meanings.
- kungfujen 18y agoThis subject is featured in a Seinfeld episode: "These PRETZELS are making me thirsty!" "These pretzels are making ME thirsty!"