Garden-path phenomena from the perspective of Lexico-Constructional Pragmatics

This paper aims to extend the understanding of the garden-path phenomenon (GPP). Based on a review and assessment of literature on GPP, this paper formulates our ‘View of Lexico-Constructional Pragmatics’ (VLCP). We expound the ambiguity and pragmaticity of GPP and distinguish its three types: lexical (ambiguity) GPP, structural (ambiguity) GPP and pragmatic (ambiguity) GPP – boiling down to unmarked and marked GPP. A GPP is usually composed of a ‘lead-in’, a ‘follow-up’ and a ‘switch’, and it is the ‘switch’ of a well-formed GPP that holds up first parsing for second-thought reparsing. The sine qua non for a bona fide GPP encompasses grammaticality, constructionality, semanticity, ambiguity, intentionality, and functionality. Due to the fact that GPP can be attributed to multiple (lexical, structural and pragmatic) means of clever language use, our exemplar GPP analysis adopts the above VLCP, a compound of relevance- and humour-oriented Lexical/Lexico-Pragmatics and Constructional Pragmatics. The paper contends that English and Chinese have differences in GPP creation. •This paper is the first attempt to address garden-path phenomenon (GPP) in light of Lexico-Constructional Pragmatics.•GPP is motivated by humour intentionality, its making and interpretation being relevance- and humour-oriented.•This paper extends narrow-sense GPP to broad-sense GPP, hence GPP of lexical, structural, and pragmatic ambiguity.•GPP's sine qua non is grammaticality, constructionality, semanticity, ambiguity, intentionality, and functionality.•English and Chinese have similarities and differences in GPP creation.