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The Old Code OpenSees
Original Post - 19 Nov 2024 - Michael H. Scott
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You have no doubt read grammatically correct sentences whose meaning you interpreted incorrectly. Only after re-reading did you realize the author’s intent. For example,
We modeled the walls with cracks.
Your initial interpretation of this sentence could have been equivalent to “We used cracks to model the walls”, which makes no sense and was not the author’s intent.
Read the sentence again and you will see the author’s intent was “We modeled the walls that had cracks”.
Confusing sentences like the example above have a special name, “garden-path sentences”, derived from the expression “to be led down the garden path”, meaning to mislead or deceive.
Here is a confusing OpenSees-centric sentence inspired by an example from the garden-path sentence Wikipedia page:
The old code OpenSees.
What is your interpretation of this sentence?
Is “old” an adjective where you want to interpret the sentence as “OpenSees is an old code”. If so, the original sentence is incomplete and grammatically incorrect. Although it works as the title of this post, as a sentence, it does not parse.
Or is “old” a noun, in which case you interpret the sentence as “The old are the ones who code OpenSees”? This probably wasn’t your initial read, but it is the grammatically correct interpretation.
You may say both of those interpretations are true–and you might be correct–but that’s not the point!
I’m not a grammar snob, but I’ve been led down the garden-path by many a sentence in articles from pick-your-favorite-journal. I wish I had written those sentences down. Garden-path sentences are hard to fabricate on demand–they almost have to be created by accident through unclear writing.
If you have read or can fabricate any earthquake engineering garden-path sentences, let me know in the Comments section below.
As I fabricate or come across garden-path examples, I will add them to the lists below.
Fabricated
- Residuals the algorithm produces compound.