7 Simple Sentences That Drive English Speakers Crazy

The old man the boat

Besides sounding like a rejected Ernest Hemingway title, this deceptive sentence is indeed grammatically correct thanks to a well-placed homonym, which is a word that’s spelled the same as another but has a different meaning.

When you start reading the sentence, old appears to be an adjective modifying man. But then where is the verb in this sentence? What’s the old man doing? Nothing! As it turns out, old is used here as a noun meaning “old people,” and that’s where our homonym, man, comes in. In this garden path sentence, man is used as a verb meaning “to work at, run or operate.”

In other words, the old people are manning the boat. May they take this sentence and sail far, far away. 

The horse raced past the barn fell

Everything was going hunky-dory until that fell at the end, huh? At first glance, you think raced is the main verb of this sentence. But actually, it’s fell. The simplest form of this sentence is “The horse fell.” The phrase raced past the barn is a reduced relative clause, and it’s being used like an adjective to tell us exactly which horse fell: It’s the horse [that was] raced past the barn.

So why not just write it that way? The quirks of English allow us to remove certain relative pronouns like that, as well as auxiliary verbs like was, and still maintain meaning. Often this results in concise, clear sentences, but not here. Long story short, the horse fell (hopefully on top of whoever invented this sentence).

The complex houses married and single soldiers and their families

Once again the trick of this garden path sentence is figuring out which word is the subject and which is the verb. At first, it seems like complex is an adjective modifying the subject houses. Your brain then wants married be the verb, but when you get to and single soldiers the whole thing blows up—you realize too late that married and single is an adjective phrase modifying soldiers. 

What’s happening here? It turns out complex is meant as a noun, as in a housing complex or apartment building, and houses is the verb, meaning “to shelter.” So, the non-confusing way to write this sentence would be: “The building shelters married and single soldiers and their families.” Or more simply, “The building shelters soldiers and their families.”

The prime number few

Are you catching on yet? Here, you immediately assume prime number is a single entity meaning a number that’s only divisible by 1 and itself. Nope! Number is the verb, and prime is short for “prime people” in the same way old was short for “old people” in our first garden path sentence. In other words: “There are few prime people around.” (The same goes for linguists.)

The man who hunts ducks out on weekends

You’ve got this one. The word hunts isn’t the verb, it’s ducks. And that means that the subject is the noun phrase man who hunts. Of course, when you see hunts ducks, your mind probably jumps to duck hunting. But this garden path sentence is actually describing a hunter who ducks out on the weekends, possibly to go hunting but maybe not. He could be going to a concert, lounging by the pool or just sneaking away for some alone time.

Until the police arrest the drug dealers control the street

An invisible comma belongs somewhere in this sentence, but it’s hard to know where, and the grammar nerd in you is feeling the itch right now. Your first inclination is probably to read until the police arrest the drug dealers as a single clause, but that leaves no subject in the remaining control the street.

If you imagine the comma after the word arrest, it becomes more clear what this garden path sentence is trying to say: “Until the police [make the] arrest, drug dealers control the street.”

Fat people eat accumulates

Come on, you’re practically an expert at solving these garden path sentences by now! Fat is the subject, and it’s not talking about fat people but the fat in our food. Accumulates is the verb, and people eat is an adjective clause modifying fat. Simply put: “The fat that people eat accumulates [in their bodies].”

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Sources:

• Merriam-Webster: “Homonym”
• San Jose State University Writing Center: “Garden Path Sentences”
• George Mason University Writing Center: “Using Reduced Relative Clauses to Write Concisely”