Confusing headlines

[Raphael]

From a book I'm currently reading (QI: The Third Book of General Ignorance):

Every serving of fruit or vegetables (at least up to five) helps to lower the risk of heart disease, strokes and mortality generally, and there is broad agreement among scientists that we should all eat more than we currently do.

[Linguoboy]

Every serving of fruit or vegetables (at least up to five) helps to lower the risk of heart disease, strokes and mortality generally, and there is broad agreement among scientists that we should all eat more than we currently do.

*opens second bag of Cheetos*

[Raphael]

A post by bradrn in the Conlang Fluency Thread:

Naak thaŋ nii bey gadiqŋu ŋa-qangat thaŋ?

what the FOC Q absorb-STAT [=have.as.member] that-tree DEF

[bradrn]

A post by bradrn in the Conlang Fluency Thread:

Naak thaŋ nii bey gadiqŋu ŋa-qangat thaŋ?

what the FOC Q absorb-STAT [=have.as.member] that-tree DEF

Obviously I was unsuccessful in my attempt to use an untranslated conlang in actual conversation. Oh well, back to the usual boring format. The relevant post has been edited.

[Raphael]

The reason I posted that quote here was the sequence "what the FOC".

[bradrn]

The reason I posted that quote here was the sequence "what the FOC".

Ah yes, that was just an unfortunate coincidence. More accurate would have been ‘what DEF.SG FOC’, or even ‘what DEF.SG COP’ perhaps.

[Travis B.]

The reason I posted that quote here was the sequence "what the FOC".

Ah yes, that was just an unfortunate coincidence. More accurate would have been ‘what DEF.SG FOC’, or even ‘what DEF.SG COP’ perhaps.

That isn't as... evocative though; I like it better the original way myself.

[bradrn]

From a letter to the paper:

Please convey my compliments to whichever editor set Tuesday’s headline: ‘Winter blast hits city with snow on alps’ directly opposite ‘Despair over inaction on ice inquiry’.

[Qwynegold]

I'm not sure if I remember the wording correctly, but it was something along these lines:

Dirigent dog i operakollaps

Conductor died in opera collapse

Because of the compound word "operakollaps", I was lead to believe that the opera house collapsed, killing the conductor. But it was in fact he who collapsed and not the building.

[Travis B.]

I'm not sure if I remember the wording correctly, but it was something along these lines:

Dirigent dog i operakollaps

Conductor died in opera collapse

Because of the compound word "operakollaps", I was lead to believe that the opera house collapsed, killing the conductor. But it was in fact he who collapsed and not the building.

I'd've read it the same way, and I don't speak Swedish...

[Moose-tache]

So in Swedish, you can create compound words that are only connected adverbially? Operakollaps can equally mean "the collapse of an opera" or "an unrelated collapse during an opera?"

simningsmärta: "an unrelated toothache that occurs while one happens to be swimming"
lågkonjunkturbankrutt: "coincidentally running out of money because one bought too many scented candles, but also there's a recession happening"

That is absolutely wild and should not be allowed.

[Ares Land]

OK, that's a stretch, but English has the same construction in 'Star Wars'

[Moose-tache]

OK, that's a stretch, but English has the same construction in 'Star Wars'

Uh, I think you'll find that one of the weapons used in the film is called the Death Star. It is literally a war of stars.

Checkmate, Atheists!

[Ares Land]

OK, that's a stretch, but English has the same construction in 'Star Wars'

Uh, I think you'll find that one of the weapons used in the film is called the Death Star. It is literally a war of stars.

Checkmate, Atheists!

I have doubts on this one. But OK. How about Star Destroyer and stardate?

[zompist]

Scientists find 30 potential new species at bottom of deep sea using robots

Someone on Twitter commented, "This is worrying. We've only started using robots ourselves."

[Moose-tache]

A star destroyer destroys stars and is two words, so...?

As for stardate, the first element explains what kind of date it is. An operacollapse does not tell you what kind of collapse it is.

[bradrn]

A star destroyer destroys stars and is two words, so...?

Arguable. Whether a noun compound has a space or not in English is more or less arbitrary; it’s probably best to consider the whole thing one word, grammatically speaking.

As for stardate, the first element explains what kind of date it is.

Does it? I cherish my ignorance of Star Trek, but to my knowledge a ‘stardate’ is not ‘a date of stars’. It is a date with some nebulous and vaguely defined relationship to stars.

[zompist]

to my knowledge a ‘stardate’ is not ‘a date of stars’. It is a date with some nebulous and vaguely defined relationship to stars.

Yeah, "star" there basically means "this is a science fiction show", with a side order of "shows may not be shown or viewed in order so we can't use calendar dates."

An operacollapse does not tell you what kind of collapse it is.

Are you similarly confused by "road accident"?

[Ares Land]

Star destroyer may be two words, but I don't think it makes a difference. 'Opera collapse' in two words would be just as confusing!

I think syntactically there are a lot of similar construction:

Jerusalem syndrome
road accident
Star destroyer

The issue here is with semantics. Presumably conductors collapse in much the same way in an opera house than in any other buildings. Specific mental issues can occur in Jerusalem that don't occur much in, I don't know, Wichita.

[Linguoboy]

A star destroyer destroys stars and is two words, so...?

No they can't. Not in the Star Was universe, at any rate. If they could, there'd be nothing special about the Death Star's superlaser, which can only destroy whole planets. As Zomp says, the function of "star" here is basically to indicate a scifi setting with interstellar travel. You could just as easily call it a "space destroyer" and that wouldn't change its implied function one iota.