Is there a name for this?

[li3wei1]

I'm wondering if there's a term for this phenomenon, which must be fairly common in Chinese, both for non-natives and for children learning to read, and possibly even for native speakers. I was reading a book about techniques for teaching Chinese, and came across this phrase:

用一些非常规的办法

I'm familiar with 非常, but not with 常规, so I spent some time trying to figure out how and why 规 was acting as an adjective. Of course I'm also familiar with 非 on its own, but the commonness of 非常 pushed me down the wrong path. So is there a linguistic term for this?

[Lu]

Wrong parsing?

Another good one for that mistake is 发展中国家.

[roddy]

发展中国家 still makes me blink sometimes. 

 

I'd just call it a parsing error. There's a list of different types (made by, ahem, a computer) here. 

[imron]

And because no-one has explicitly called out the parsing error yet (and for those wondering) it should be 非  常规 not 非常  规

[TheBigZaboon]

Not just a Chinese phenomenon...

 

...eats shoots and leaves...

 

...eats shoots, and leaves...

 

...eats, shoots, and leaves...

[Angelina]

[Altair]

Garden path sentence

 

"Garden path" is a reference to being "led down the garden path."  I don't know the origin of this last phrase, but I assume it refers to the fact that garden paths don't really lead to anywhere else except some place in the same garden.

 

Another example of the phenomenon is: "Time flies like an arrow; fruit flies like a banana"

 

Is there a Chinese term for this?

[hedwards]

Ugh, eats shoots and leaves, I wish people would stop using that example, it's more illustrative of people's pedantry than a legitimate linguistic problem.

 

You do lose a certain amount of efficiency by having the commas wrong or absent, but the context generally makes it clear which possibility it's going to be. Same goes for Chinese characters lacking spaces between them.

 

I do think that this is more or less a unique Chinese phenomenon in that Chinese is one of, if not the only, written language to not have adopted some form of separation between words. And to make matters worse, unlike languages like Latin that are based on an alphabet and use a relatively small set of endings, there's no way of knowing where one words ends and another begins in Chinese without already knowing it. (Yes I know probably a bit of an exaggeration)

 

OTOH, at least in Chinese the whole issue of character/word tends to be a bit blurred as far as I can tell. It surprised me the first couple times I encountered students that didn't know what a word is. And the lack of spacing and enunciation in Standard Chinese are probably a large part of the lack of recognition.

[Tiana]

I do think that this is more or less a unique Chinese phenomenon in that Chinese is one of, if not the only, written language to not have adopted some form of separation between words. 

 

There are actually many languages where there is no separation between words. Off the top of my head, I can think of Korean, Japanese, Vietnamese,...

As far as I know, written languages tend to favour either word or syllable separation.

(I wonder if there are written languages that favour "alphabet/letter separation" alone.)

[li3wei1]

This is all very helpful, thanks. Is there a difference between a 'garden path sentence' and the Chinese examples? Most of the garden path examples depend on the fact that you're reading the sentence from beginning to end, and the first time you read it you are likely to make the mistake. With at least some of the Chinese examples, the mistake persists, or can persist, even after you've read the whole sentence several times. Or is that because my Chinese is worse than my English?

 

And is there a Chinese term for this?

[TheBigZaboon]

I don't know if there is a Chinese term for this, but as to how long the mistake can persist, I have been privileged to sit in on a number of seminars where two "pedants," each specializing in classical Chinese, each one from a famous university, argued the meaning of Song dynasty land-holding contracts. Where to put the notional commas, word breaks, or sentences pauses would seem to determine how many generations of your prodigy you sold into serfdom in return for protection from marauders to be provided by the local warlord.

 

As to your personal experience with any Chinese sentence, I don't think this is because of problems either with your Chinese or your English. Parsing what someone has said or written is an imperfect natural phenomenon basic to human use of language. He meant this, she interpreted it to mean that, is the basis of many a family argument. The fact that we are able to get it right as often as we do is part of the miracle of human interaction. I've tried to translate sentences from contracts or proposals in languages other than Chinese, which when I asked a native speaker for help, triggered heated discussions among other native speakers as to the actual meaning of the original. Once an ambiguous phrase or sentence achieves existence, it has a life of its own. Just be thankful you were able to figure it out at all.

 

If you've got time on your hands, try reading an unedited text written by a scientist or engineer. Despite the fact that the piece is written in the author's native language, the run-ons and improperly separated ideas that tumble out of his or her brilliant head can cause misunderstanding even for a professional editor or translator. 

 

As to the comment above about how often the placement of commas in English works itself out based on context, trial lawyers love people who think like that. 

[Michaelyus]

Parse error = 分析错误 which is really only used in computing or academic contexts.

Garden-path sentence = 花园路径现象

 

But the more colloquial phrasing with the verb, e.g. [把句子] 分错了 is relatively common. Otherwise it's just grouped with everything else wrong with your reading as 读错了！误解了！etc.