From a site with “20 Jokes That Only Intellectuals Will Understand”, one that I had not heard before, appealing to both linguists and programmers.
The set-up:
19. The programmer’s wife tells him: “Run to the store and pick up a loaf of bread.. If they have eggs, get a dozen.”
Ok, there’s an ellipsis, of an indefinite: a dozen of something. But what? There are two candidates in the context: the close eggs, and the discourse-topical loaf of bread. In the joke, the programmer’s wife intends the first, but the programmer supplies the second, as the punch line indicates:
The programmer comes home with 12 loaves of bread.
March 20, 2014 at 1:06 pm |
There’s a variant with a secondary punchline. Replace bread with gallons of milk and dozen with half-dozen. When the husband comes home, the wife asks, “Why did you get 6 gallons of milk?” The programmer responds, “They had eggs.”
March 20, 2014 at 5:07 pm |
There’s a principle of locality in parsing, which is violated here.
March 20, 2014 at 5:14 pm |
There are several principles for parsing. Locality — nearness — is one, but topicality is another.