Word.ws English Dictionary

garden path sentences

garden path sentences is the plural of garden path sentence.

Meaning of garden path sentence

Noun

garden path sentence (plural garden path sentences)

  1. A sentence that is easily parsed incorrectly when first read, due to the ambiguity of a word or words.
    • Whether a particular construction causes a garden-path effect depends on the specific grammar of the language. For example, the famous example of an English garden-path sentence in (1) ["The horse raced past the barn fell"] would not exist if the past tense form of the verb race were not identical...1995, Reiko Mazuka, Kenji Itoh, “Can Japanese Speakers be Led down the Garden Path?”, in Reiko Mazuka, Noriko Nagai, editors, Japanese Sentence Processing, Hillsdale, N.J.: Lawrence Erlbaum...

Questions about garden path sentences

What is garden path sentences the plural of?
Garden path sentences is the plural of garden path sentence.

Words near garden path sentences in the dictionary

  1. garden offices
  2. garden parties
  3. garden party
  4. garden path
  5. garden path sentence
  6. garden path sentences
  7. garden paths
  8. garden patience
  9. garden pea
  10. garden peas
  11. garden pest

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: garden path sentences (page history and authors); garden path sentence (page history and authors). Text available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 license. Word.ws reformatted the entry and added links. Wiktionary data of 2026-09-02.

Last updated:

Cite this entry: “garden path sentences.” Word.ws, https://word.ws/garden_path_sentences. Based on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.