Question

(LAN) Brandon reads the sentence "While the man hunted the deer ran into the woods". Brandon chooses to read this as one phrase that meant the man was hunting a deer. Why has Brandon done this?

A. Brandon was mislead by the garden path sentence and chose the simplest phase structure (minimal attachment)
B. Brandon only had one syntactic tree to choose from so he was unable to read the sentence as two phrases.
C. Brandon had trouble understanding this ambiguous sentence because it breaks the rule for minimal attachment.
D. Both A and C are true.

Answer 1

Brandon has chosen to read the sentence "While the man hunted the deer ran into the woods" as one phrase that meant the man was hunting a deer because he was misled by the garden path sentence and chose the simplest phrase structure (minimal attachment).

Step-by-step explanation:

Brandon has chosen to read the sentence "While the man hunted the deer ran into the woods" as one phrase that meant the man was hunting a deer because he was misled by the garden path sentence and chose the simplest phrase structure (minimal attachment). Garden path sentences are structurally ambiguous sentences that lead the reader to incorrectly interpret the sentence at first and then reanalyze it when the true meaning becomes clear. In this case, the sentence is ambiguous because the phrase "the man hunted the deer" could be read as two separate phrases or as one phrase where the man is hunting a deer.

By choosing the simplest phrase structure (minimal attachment), Brandon interprets the sentence in a way that requires the fewest additional phrases or clauses. This is often the default strategy when encountering garden path sentences. However, it can lead to misinterpretation.