Garden path sentences

[pne]

"Fat people eat accumulates" and other garden path sentences

Comments

[pthalo]

Weird, in Second Language Acquisition we used garden path in a different way. For us, it meant that the teacher leads students to make an L1 transfer error which then shows them that the mistake is natural and normal and then after they make the mistake they're instructed on the correct form and this helps them to remember it. For example, native speakers of English are learning French and they are asked to translate the following sentences.

I know when JFK was the president.
I know the day he died.
I know the name of his wife.
I know Jacquline Kennedy Onassis.

So they translate them into French and they end up using the same verb for the last one as they did for the previous three because in English there's only one verb "to know" but in French (and in Hungarian) you use a different verb for the last one. So they're led down the garden path to make a transfer error and then they all see why the transfer error was made and then learn the correct form and this helps them to remember to use the different verb with the last example later on.