• BanMeFromPosting [none/use name]@hexbear.net
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      5 days ago

      Nah, its fucked. I am not a linguist, but I think it’s the syntax that’s weird.

      94 outdoor cats got rainbow sleeves attached to their collars.
      After the sleeves were attached, the amount of birds that the cats brought home dropped by two thirds.
      The amount of mice brought home remained consistent. This is because the mice cannot see the colors on the rainbow sleeve, but the birds can.

      Seeing as how we’re doing language fuckery and English isn’t my first language and I know I do weird stuff with where and how I place sentences in relation to eachother, as well as fuck up where commas go all the time; well, please let me know what I’ve messed up here. Dont let me know if you think I didnt mess anything up, because I did, some of my sentences read weird.

      • WideningGyro [any]@hexbear.net
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        5 days ago

        I took one semester of neurolinguistics and this reminds me of “garden path” sentences. Sentences that are grammatical at the syntax level, but sort of leads your brain into the wrong place and so “feels” ungrammatical.

        “The old man the boat” “The horse raced past the barn fell”

        I’m not saying it’s quite the same, but my brain sure as fuck struggled to parse “the birds carried back through the flap fell”

      • KuroXppi [they/them]@hexbear.net
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        5 days ago

        Yep, much clearer how you’ve written it out. If they wanted to keep it as a run-on sentence

        “94 cats were fitted with rainbow sweaters in a test which resulted in a two-thirds reduction in the number of dead birds brought home, with no noted reduction in dead mice brought home, this is believed to be because birds can see the rainbow colours while the mice cannot.”

        Much longer though when written with the signposting relational additions.

    • Beaver [he/him]@hexbear.net
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      5 days ago

      I read this post last night at 2am, and thought “holy fuck I need to go to sleep, I don’t understand what I just read”