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Sean Brierley wrote:
Writing "the horse raced past the barn fell" seems to be an incomplete
thought, any way you slice it.
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I would agree, to some extent. But you have to remember that linguistics deals with language, not writing. What's grammatical in writing is not always grammatical in speech, especially in different dialects. Besides, we rarely speak in fully grammatical sentences unless we are making a conscious effort to do so, like when we are in court or at a formal gathering of some kind.
The question is, could you imagine someone _saying_ "the horse raced past the barn fell." I can, and I've heard people say many things that are quite similar to that.
For example, a man is standing looking at the aftermath of the horse falling. A woman walks up to him.
"What happened," she asks.
"The horse raced past the barn fell," the man replies.
In speech, you would get subtle cues from the speaker and from the context indicating what is meant. But even with those cues, you can still be misled.
Again, this business is simply designed to demonstrate a linguistic phenomenon that happens, I think, in every language.
"Whatever you do, do NOT let your editorial decisions be made by the squiggly spell-checking lines in Word!" ~Keith Cronin, Techwr-l irritant ;-)
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