Sloppy grammar implicates Cheney in second shooting
Man Shot by Cheney Leaving Hospital
Oh the fun that can be had with sloppy modifiers. Maybe it's just that my head is in a strange place from looking at piles of datasets for too long, but honestly, my eyes skimmed over this headline and I thought "He shot ANOTHER one?"
This parse stayed in my head for just for a moment before pragmatics kicked in to help out. I realized I must have garden pathed the sentence or something because there's no way we'd hear about another shooting by the VP this fast.
Had the story been headlined with the verb in the active voice, as in "Man Cheney shot leaving hospital", there would have been no ambiguity. My guess is that there's avoidance of the active voice in the Cheney shooting stories since it sounds so much more, well, active. I adore that by trying to avoid placing grammatical cause on Cheney for the shooting, someone made it sound as if Cheney shot another person.
OMG, A___ just sent me another one. Cheney's out of control. Shooting people coming out of hospitals, hitting lawyers. Yeah, I'd call it an accident too if he kept attacking me.
Lawyer hit by Cheney calls shooting an accident
1 comment:
Oh, I LOVE headlines like these! I keep an eye out for sentences with double meanings -- usually from misplaced modifiers -- in student papers; if I have a chance I'll even record them. You must really enjoy this kind of thing with your interest in linguistics.
One of my student-paper favorites (not a misplaced modifier) was in reference to that part of the public that consumes the most television: "Meanwhile, the consumptive public sits inside watching TV all day." Well, I imagine they would have to, with the quarantine and all.
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