45 Ambiguous Newspaper Headlines
(From The Language Instinct by Steven Pinker)
(http://josecarilloforum.com/imgs/ambiguous-headlines_composite-1M1.png)
Queen Mary Having Bottom Scraped
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Stud Tires Out
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Man Eating Piranha Mistakenly Sold As Pet Fish
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Notice: "Young Girls Wanted for Pickling & Bottling...Apply Within"*
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Miracle Cure Kills Fifth Patient*
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Panda Mating fails; Veterinarian Takes Over
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Drunk Gets Nine Months in Violin Case
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Iraqi Head Seeks Arms
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Children’s Stool Great for Use in Garden
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Columnist Gets Urologist in Trouble with His Peers
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New Housing For Elderly Not Yet Dead
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New Missouri U. Chancellor Expects Little Sex
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12 On Their Way to Cruise Among Dead in Plane Crash
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N.J. Judge to Rule on Nude Beach
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Chou Remains Cremated
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Chinese Apeman Dated
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Hershey Bars Protest
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Reagan Wins On Budget, But More Lies Ahead
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Deer Kill 130,000
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Complaints About NBA Referees Growing Ugly
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Squad Helps Dog Bite Victim
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Stiff Opposition to Casketless Funeral Plan
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Juvenile Court to Try Shooting Defendant
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Something went wrong in jet crash, experts say
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Police begin campaign to run down jaywalkers
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Safety Experts say school bus passengers should be belted
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Survivor of Siamese twins joins parents
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Farmer Bill dies in house
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Is there a ring of debris around Uranus?
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Prostitutes appeal to Pope
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Panda mating fails; Veterinarian takes over
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Soviet virgin lands short of goal again
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British left waffles on Falkland Islands
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Eye drops off shelf
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Teacher strikes idle kids
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Shot off woman’s leg helps Nicklaus to 66
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Enraged cow injures farmer with ax
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Plane too close to ground, crash probe told
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Miners refuse to work after death
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Stolen painting found by tree
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Two soviet ships collide, one dies
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2 sisters reunited after 18 years in checkout counter
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Killer sentenced to die for second time in 10 years
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Never withhold herpes infection from loved one
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Drunken drivers paid $1000 in ‘84
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If strike isn’t settled quickly, it may last a while
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Enfiels couple slain; Police suspect homicide
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And:
Two cars were reported stolen by the Groveton police yesterday.
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We will sell gasoline to anyone in a glass container.
—From Tina’s Humor Archives (http://monster-island.org/tinashumor/humor/headline.html)
ABOUT STEVEN PINKER AND THE BOOK:
(http://josecarilloforum.com/imgs/The-Language-Instinct_1stEdition-1A.jpg)
Steven Pinker's The Language Instinct (William Morrow and Company, 1994) argues that humans are born with an innate capacity for language. It deals sympathetically with Noam Chomsky's claim that all human language shows evidence of a universal grammar, but dissents from Chomsky's skepticism that evolutionary theory can explain the human language instinct. The book received the William James Book Prize from the American Psychological Association and the Public Interest Award from the Linguistics Society of America.
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*Upon review this headline doesn't appear either in Pinker's book or in Tina's Humor Archives. It's an intruder that somehow managed to sneak in, but we'll let it stay because it's as authentic as as deceptively ambiguous anyway as the legit members of the collection.