I must try to cover something other than language for a change. Until that happens though, here is something I found pretty interesting, and it should take some of your time.

The horse raced past the barn fell.

What does this sentence mean? It probably made no sense to you on the first read, and yet it is a completely well-formed sentence of English. After some grappling, you might figure out that the correct reading should be:

The horse [ (that was) raced past the barn (by someone/something else) ] fell.

The above sentence is one of the better-quoted garden path sentences - sentences that lead the user to an incorrect reading. The term is derived from the saying "to be led down the garden path" meaning "to be misled". These sentences are often used by psycholinguists to show that humans process sentences word by word, and have to backtrack to a previous point in the sentence in case a successful reading(parse) is not possible. Here are some sentences lifted from various sources. Try to figure out their correct reading - they are all perfectly valid English sentences!

• The man who hunts ducks out on weekends.
• The cotton clothing is usually made of grows in Mississippi.
• Fat people eat accumulates.
• The complex houses married and single students and their families.
• The prime number few.
• The old man the boat.
• The tycoon sold the offshore oil tracts for a lot of money wanted to kill JR.
• I convinced her children are noisy.
• The player kicked the ball kicked the ball.
• Mary gave the child the dog bit a bandaid.
• Until the police arrest the drug dealers control the street.
• The dog I really love bones.
• That Jill is never here hurts.
• Have the students who failed the exam take the supplementary.
• Every woman that admires a man that paints likes Monet.
• The raft floated down the river sank.