Opiniatrety

The lexical semantics of the verbs "dress" and "race."

There are more horse races than man dresses?

teo, is that really an answer? It sounds suspiciously like explaining why opium puts you to sleep in terms of its dormitive properties. Or perhaps I should ask: What features of the lexical semantics explain/constitute this difference?

Juan, but men dress all the time! Or, if you prefer, check out the results for "the woman dressed"; there are a lot more instances with punctuation (e.g., "the woman, dressed much like the other one"), but still you quite often sentences structured like the garden-path one ("The woman dressed in her white tunic sits cross-legged"). These are acceptable at first sight even though the reading on which "the woman" is the subject of "dressed" seems like it should be as available as in "The horse raced past the barn fell."

I did find another instance of "the horse raced" + PP as an NP (you have to search on "the horse raced" -"barn fell" or something):

If a horse has been purchased by a VAT registered person who subsequently sells shares in the animal to other parties with whom he joins in a separate VAT partnership, the original invoicing arrangements will not be disturbed, i.e. the seller will not be required to raise a further VAT invoice for his retained share in the horse raced by the partnership. (emph. added)

So it seems that "the horse raced" + PP isn't impossible as a standalone NP, which is what I suspected when I started searching. Still, it seems like there's a difficulty with the locution that can't be explained by garden-path effects alone.

Weiner, I think it's just the way you've constructed the examples. Take, for example "The man dressed oddly farted." That bristles in the same way that "The horse raced past the barn fell."

Because there's not a lot of syntactical space (n.b.: totally making this up) between "dressed" and "farted", and between "raced" and "fell," we get confused, because we're used to that kind of space, like in "The man dressed in a skirt didn't raise suspicion at CWEA." Whereas "The man dressed raised suspicion" would be awkward.

For me, there's a big difference between "The horse raced past the barn fell" and "The horse raced past the barn didn't fall to the ground," in that the first doesn't make sense, while the second does, because the word-space in the second allows us to associate "raced past the barn" and "didn't fall to the ground" as separate things.

You may now disregard everything I've just said.

"associate" s/b "register" or "recognize"

I'm not at a much (if at all) higher level of understanding here myself. "The man dressed oddly farted" is a good example; that's tough to puzzle out. And in fact the analogous non-garden-pathy formation all sound bad to me too: "Stop the man dressed oddly!" "I ran away from the man dressed oddly." (Well, maybe that's OK.) Could one of the factors here be that "the oddly dressed man" is much more natural?

Yet "I ran away from the man dressed in black" and "Stop the man dressed in black!" are perfectly OK. So it seems like there's still a question, why does "dressed" + PP not behave like "dressed oddly" and "raced" + PP? And garden-path effects don't seem to be the answer.

I'm telling you, lexical semantics. Or, perhaps better, a combination of lexical semantics (stuff like "dress" preferably taking a PP rather than an adverb, etc.) and the frequency of the various combinations in discourse.

A "fell" is a hill or mountain. If the barn fell designates the hill behind the barn (as opposed to the hill on the other side of the paddock, I assume), then it's perfectly reasonable to say that "The horse raced past the barn fell." Write it as "barn-fell" if you must.

This has the advantage that the horse doesn't have to be put down after the end of the sentence.

I was guessing at first that the explanation had something to do with the fact that "dressed" is much more often a past participle than "raced" is (as opposed to a straight past tense verb). But the other examples now suggest that it's something about the shortness of the phrase that follows. Maybe we subconsciously look ahead, see that there are very few words left, and this influences our reading of "raced" or "dressed" as a verb? I don't know.

Perhaps also these very short phrases are already somewhat awkward themselves. "The horse fell" seems slightly more awkward than "The horse fell down".

As usual, a completely wicked comment by Ben. Which I will elaborate on: "fell" is an adjective meaning "evil," as in "one fell swoop." With a slightly archaic reversal of adj-noun order, "The horse raced by the barn fell" (the horse was frightened by the barn with its evil aspect, and raced by it).
Terrific that you found a new instance, Matt. With a tweak, "The horse raced by the partners fell."

In "the horse raced by the barn," s/b "past" for "by." Tut.

I think I'm with Teo, insofar as I understand what he's talking about. "dressed" is used as an adjective all the time, "raced" very infrequently. So when you see "the horse raced past the barn" it looks like a complete, familiar sentence. Then there's a "fell" hanging off the end and it's jarring. Whereas when you see "the woman dressed in a green tunic", well it could plausibly be a complete sentence but it could just as well be a subject, so when there's a verb following it looks quite natural and you know what's going on.

(It might be interesting to investigate what it is about the verbs "dress" and "race" that makes their past participles more and less likely to be used as adjectives, and whether there were any attributes that could be extended out to a more general observation; or possibly not.)

There's likely an assumption behind "the man dressed" that the man dressed himself at some point, but the horse was raced.

The man beaten to a pulp fell.

However:

1. I ran away from the man beaten to a pulp.

2. Which man fell? The man beaten to a pulp.

3. Stop the the man beaten to a pulp!

3 definitely sounds odd to me, 1 seems odd, too, but maybe because I probably wouldn't have to run from a man in such a state. 2 seems ok - not as ok as "the man who was beaten to a pulp" but not too jarring as is.

"beaten" does not work here -- it is a past participle but not a past tense.

Hmm..I think it IS a matter of probable occurence. (lexical semantics, what teo said),
Consider
1. The man pushed past the teenagers rudely.
2. The man pushed past the teenagers fell.

3. The man pushed by the teenagers rudely.
4; The man pushed by the teenagers fell.

Do you get garden-pathed by number 4? I don't think so.

I just tried #4 on someone who was annoyed but not confused by it, so I think you're right about that datum.

It figures that beaten doesn't work. I was looking for something like pushed, but it was too late at night, although I suppose not as late as it is now.

The "beaten to a pulp" sentences are interesting anyway, since they're other examples of past participles that don't work well as adjectivals. And since it's not a past tense there can't be any garden path effects.

I'm neglecting things a bit for the holidays but I may respond in a bit more depth later.

The horse raced past exhaustion fell.

I hear exhaustion fell is beautiful this time of year.