2。 Literature Review

Chinese scholars, like Wang Yong, Song Wenhui and Si Xiaorong, whose data analysis and quantitative study also have illustrated that it’s necessary for us to conduct research on garden path sentences。 Pointing out another structure when the first choice is wrong will take a long time。 However, people cannot find it at times。 At that time, people will have “led up the garden path” and be taken in considering that this sentence has more structures than its initial。

2。1 The definition of GP Sentences

A garden path sentence, such as “The old man the boat,” is right in its grammar (but such kind of sentence usually considered wrong by the readers); the readers are trapped by a new grammatical analysis which finally is proved as an insignificance or unintended。 “To be led down the garden path” is related to “garden path” which has the meaning of deceived, tricked, or seduced。 Garden path sentences are such kind of sentences that the initial interpretation of the sentence structure differs from the actual。 Carroll defined the phenomenon of garden path sentences like the follow:“ We interpret a sentence in a particular way only to find out near the end that we misinterpreted it。 The subjective impression is that of being led down a garden path until discovering at the end we took the wrong path and have to retrace our efforts。” (Carroll 71)

3。 Classification and Traits of GP Sentences

Through adding new words to some phrases, readers may understand a sentence。 When the meaning of the phrase cannot make any sense, the readers will stop analyzing the sentences。 As what is revealed above, when the readers analyze a sentence, they will firstly lay emphasis on syntax, trying to make the sentence understood by themselves through their own experience, then readers can have a better understanding of semantics。 To some degree, the readers know that the following word or phrase is not consistent with the structure of the article, thus it cannot be incorporated into the path down which they have been led。 Garden path sentences may not exist in spoken communication as much as people believe due to the prosodic qualities of speech, such qualities of speech can be used to resolve ambiguities in the original text。 This topic is of great importance in theoretical linguistics, and it gains great attention by literary theorist Stanley Fish。文献综述

It is not simple ambiguity that creates a garden path sentence; on the contrary, there must be a predominantly more usual meaning linked with the early words in a sentence than is engaged in a correct meaning。 When the reader tries to interpret the sentence as it is being read, confusion mostly occurs at that time, allocating roles to words that they normally fall under。 Whether a sentence is misleading can thus be a matter of degree, and will rely on the idiolect of the reader or listener, who may be more or less acquainted with particular word meanings。

Then, how should we deal with GP sentences?

Simultaneously, the most essential part to avoid the sentence comprehension being misled or even being impeded is the decoding or disambiguation strategies。 Meanwhile, some specific descriptions can also be accessible on the Internet。 A GP sentence is a right sentence from grammar that begins in a way in which the reader’s or hearer’s most possible interpretation will not be correct, so that those people will be allures and misled to a wrong syntactic analysis which will be a hopeless bottom。

Regarded with the classification of English GP sentences, we can pide it into two fundamental parts from the perspective of its potential ambiguity sources, one is subordinate clause-main/matrix clause ambiguity and the other is ambiguity resulting from different kinds of word class。 There is also another way to classify GP sentence into two categories。 Under the first circumstance, it has a local ambiguity meaning which can be explained within this sentence usually with punctuation or addition of a word such as the sentence “The old train the young fight。” If we add a comma, it can be understood as follows: “The old train, the young fight”。 The latter will be better caught on。 The other kind of garden paths is called globally ambiguous because the meaning still makes people confused no matter how many times people read it, if people are not given the particular context, like in the sentence “The cat was found by the shed by the gardener”。 This sentence could be explained as either the shed was by the gardener or the gardener found the cat by the shed。 This meaning only can be clear and specific in certain context。 Otherwise, it won’t make sense when first being read。 Due to the inflections and tones of the speaker, people can clearly get the meaning of the garden paths。来,自,优.尔:论;文*网www.youerw.com +QQ752018766-