Attachment – Arnold Zwicky's Blog (original) (raw)
Archive for the ‘Attachment’ Category
Briefly: HA in the commercials
August 27, 2015
From a long-running ad campaign:
Eliminate odors you’ve gone noseblind to for over 30 days with Febreze.
The intended parsing is High Attachment (HA) — eliminate for 30 days (with Febreze) odors you’ve gone noseblind to — though Low Attachment (LA) — odors you’ve gone noseblind to for 30 days, eliminate them with Febreze — is the default parsing. In a sense, LA is always available and often tempting, but in this case plausibility wins out over the default: why would you seek a remedy only for odors you’ve been noseblind to for over 30 days?
(On noseblindness, see this posting.)
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Going for High Attachment
July 30, 2015
Passed on by Steven Levine on Facebook on 7/23, this headline for a story that day by Quinn Foley:
Children’s Choir Surprised Their Teacher With Cancer
The intended reading was that their teacher with cancer should be parsed as a constituent, a NP understood as ‘their teacher who has cancer’ — that’s Low Attachment (LA) for the modifier with cancer, and LA is the default parsing for such modifiers (see other postings in the “Attachment” Page on this blog). Despite that, it’s very hard not to understand the modifier as having High Attachment (HA), modifying surprised their teacher, a reading that’s both ludicrous and distressing.
For the moment, I’m just puzzled by this fact.
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