Context is king: As we listen to someone, we’re actively interpreting and parsing the input, and we are always led by what we believe is being said. In a Garden Path Sentence, for example, we’re fooled because our intuitive interpretation may not be the correct one, thus making the language sound like gibberish for a while. But, sometimes, we may take the whole context to be something completely different than what the speaker has in mind because of the possible ambiguities, and misunderstandings then arise.
A really funny (and rather creepy) example comes from Ken Batisda. He first says the other host couldn’t show up tonight and promptly begins to tell the news without making any sort of pause. Because of his heavy use of pronouns, we’re led to believe he’s talking about the other host until the name of the actual victim is mentioned:
For a good 2 or 3 seconds, it’s only natural to believe that the co-host is the one that died a horrible death. And, this happened on both sides of the Atlantic, even though no pronouns were mistreated on the BBC:
While we’re on this topic, let’s talk about ambiguity in general on the news. If failing to resolve ambiguous interpretations may have hilarious results, it’s fair to point out that making explicit all underlying possibilities often has some comical value as well:
I thought it was clear that she was talking about the fruits, but I’m glad she decided to make it explicit to all viewers that she was not talking about breasts. Good to know 