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the president will speak to small businessmen
This is a good example. You have to stretch to misinterpret this sentence. It might not be quite the stretch of some other examples ('rubber baby buggy bumpers' comes to mind) but it's still a stretch.
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Well, that's my point. The ambiguity only comes without the context or back story. Because earlier in the article (which doesn't exist) we've been describing the differences between American and British rock stars, and its the shenanigans of the former that are being pointed out. Either way, I was trying to choose a third example to show that combinatorially compounds like this are ambiguous. We tend to think of one meaning as being the right one, but that has little to do with the structure of the compound or its constituent lexical items, but more to do with its usage, or context in some story or text.
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Thanks, Jackie. As I just posted above. The strangeness of this kinds of constructions mainly comes from their being quoted out of context. If you listen to how people actually talk and read carefully how they write you see all kinds of ambiguity in their texts. People speaking usually catch these mistakes and rephrase their sentence to resolve the ambiguity, but sometimes not until others point it out.
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Of course it's a stretch, but the possibility exists and is quite useful in jokes and riddles. It all started because some folks think there are language rules, which are simple, and which take care of all problems. There are rules to language, very few of which are simple, and most of which have little to do with the grammar rules we were taught in school.
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The ambiguity only comes without the context or back story
Which is where headlines run into problems. Often they come without the requisite context. An example of this might be:
Starr Asked to Delay Report.
The normal reading of this, knowing that it was a headline in a newspaper, would be, following standard headline syntax conventions, and knowing the context of the investigation into the Clinton involvement in suspect dealing of the Whitewater Development Corporation, that independent counsel, Kenneth Starr was asked if he would delay the release of his report on the Whitewater matter. Reading the article we found that Starr himself was doing the asking.
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Thanks, Faldage. Yes, and I mentioned garden path sentences as an aside. Of course, I now wish that I hadn't mentioned any of it, but that's life.
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the possibility exists and is quite useful in jokes and riddles
Useful in jokes and riddles is one thing, I just refuse to take it seriously as a grammatical, or even syntactical problem.
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Yes, but the reading of the story just helps the reader to resolve the ambiguity. It does not get rid of its existence or the possibility of its misnterpretation. And I am not saying that I'm against clear writing. In fact at this point I'm not saying much of anything. Just backpeddling. All I was trying to say, and I admit I did it poorly, is that things are more complicated than imagined and that sometimes a hyphen might not be the solution. I mentioned commas as another possibility. Rewriting might work, too.
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to wit (this I serendipitously saw today):
"Defendant not to blame judge told"
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I just refuse to take it seriously as a grammatical, or even syntactical problem.
Well, it is a problem in natural language processing (NLP) and quite a serious one, especially for the humorless generative grammarians. Not saying it won't be solved, but perhaps not in the ways being attempted nowadays.
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eh no, jheem, I'm glad you brought it up. The thread has been interesting and educational.
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Some confusuion in headlines ("heds" in the news jargon) is that Editors know that short verbs are implied (is, be, was, etc.)
So to an Editor the hed reads Starr is Asked to Delay Report. The problem arises when you're too literal when reading heds.
All very confusing, n'est ce pas?
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I think the main problem here is that we don't use the past tense in headlines, unless it's specifically required.
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Starr is Asked to Delay Report
And I believe that most newspaper readers are aware, at least unconciously, of this convention and, as the lovely AnnaS noted, the non-use of the past tense, which means that what appears to be past tense is normally the passive. Unfortunately, following these conventions leads to the misinterpretation of the headline, since the article stated that Starr was doing the asking. The headline should have read:
Starr Asks to Delay Report
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I just got back after a couple days away. Thanks for the bouncing answers, and even greater thanks for the discussion that followed. Fascinating!
Not to belabour the matter, but back to those famous rubber baby buggy bumpers for just a sec. I know the babies aren't rubber. Not sure if this got pointed out, but it's possible that either the bumpers alone are made of rubber, or the entire buggies are. I think that is the ambiguity (even with a basic understanding of babies, buggies and bumpers) that is hard to correct with hyphens.
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it's possible that either the bumpers alone are made of rubber, or the entire buggies are.
Good point. In that light we note that rubber baby-buggy bumpers is ambiguous unless you assume that, if it were only the bumpers that were rubber, then double hyphenization would be required, giving us rubber baby-buggy-bumpers.
Personally, I think that hyphenization is the signpost to the slippery-slope of compound word making, as in the 20th century slide from base ball through the unstable transitional form base-ball to baseball.
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Starr Asks To Delay Report
Starr Asked To Delay Report
Surely the first one implies that it is still possible that Starr's request will be granted, while the second one implies that it is no longer possible (perhaps because the report has already been published).
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the second one implies that it is no longer possible
I don't see the implications you suggest, simply because the syntax of headlines doesn't indicate that Starr was doing the asking in the latter form. Maybe that's strictly an USn convention, but.
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Although probably not misleading for the target audience:
Intel Misses 1Q Earnings Forecast By A Penny
Anyone care to speculate on how big that penny was?
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that looks like a U.S. American type penny; i.e., one tenth of a dime..
as these things go, this probly caused the value of Intel stock to fall millions of dollar-bucks that day in the resulting sell-off.
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OK, lemme put it this way. If the 1Q Earnings Forecast was $20 million, what was the real 1Q earnings?
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can't know that w/o you know how many outstanding shares there are, as the "penny" is in $/share.
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the "penny" is in $/share
Exactamenticals.
Or as I said when I posed the question:
probably not misleading for the target audience
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Starr Asks To Delay Report
Starr Asked To Delay Report
Well now you are getting into the realm of making the hed fit exactly into the space available and in the type size wanted.
The general rule is that largest heds go at the top of the page on the "lead stories," decreasing in size as you move down. Oh, on second thought I'm not going into all that.
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The life of a subeditor is a dreary one. IMHO, of course!
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Me: Starr Asks To Delay Report
Starr Asked To Delay Report
Surely the first one implies that it is still possible that Starr's request will be granted, while the second one implies that it is no longer possible (perhaps because the report has already been published).
Faldage: I don't see the implications you suggest, simply because the syntax of headlines doesn't indicate that Starr was doing the asking in the latter form. Maybe that's strictly an USn convention, but.
Ok, suppose something comes to light now about something that happened quite a while ago. If for example it was only just discovered today that Starr had asked to delay the report in the mid-90s, how would you construct a headline?
This comes up tolerably often in the UK where certain documents, for example cabinet minutes, are only released to the public after 30 years. So we only get to find out about some things 30 years later, when even in a headline the present simple tense is obviously inappropriate.
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suppose something comes to light now about something that happened quite a while ago. If for example it was only just discovered today that Starr had asked to delay the report in the mid-90s, how would you construct a headline?
New Findings Re Starr Report
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Well, OK - but it is so indefinite as to be virtually meaningless within its own conntext.
How about
Starr's request delayed Report
???
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The point of a headline is to get you to read an article. It doesn't have to tell you much about what's in the article but what it does tell you shouldn't be misleading.
If something new came up today about a news item from the '90s, just the fact that there was something new should be enough for a headline.
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True - but it dodges the issue raised above. At least mine does attempt to provide an answer to how to make a particular point wothout ambiguity (at least, that's what I fondly hope it does, until some smart-arse tells me different! Don't worry peoples - my shoulders are broad.) 
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to provide an answer to how to make a particular point without ambiguity
A) I wasn't being particularly facetious. I think if the issue comes up ten years later all the hed need do is point out that there was something new.
2) I think your wording, even in the context of the original time frame, still mistates the issue. It wasn't his request that delayed the report, his request was that he be allowed to delay the report.
Personally I would go with Starr Asks to Delay Report for the contemporaneous hed, if that passes muster with those who know the carved-in-stone rules of hed writing and my New Findings Re Starr Report for the present-day revisiting, remembering that we have space restrictions to consider in any of these.
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The very fact that you are able to state, unequivocally (and correctly) that I have mis-stated the issue shows, I think, that my hed is, at least, unambiguous. I had forgotten exactly which was the correct fact.
So, it should have been
Starr requested report's delay ,
which is just as unambiguous and, I have to say, takes less room than your contribution.
FWIW, I completely agree with you that your hed would arouse interest in those who would be interested. But IMAO, that isn't what we were trying to do - we jes wanna hed that gives specific information without misunderstanding.
- and I didn't for a moment think you were being faceitious, my dear fellow.
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A garden path sentence is one that you think you are following quite nicely until you get toward the end and find it suddenly seems to mean nothing at all.You can't tempt me with that, Faldage. I'm only a drone.  Seriously, we say babies "bounce" because it rhymes with "ounce". And there is more bounce to the ounce in a baby, than in anyone else.
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I hesitate to add another word at this late date, but in my experience the correct phrase is "RED rubber baby buggy bumpers". Never thought of hyphenating the phrase.
The bumpers would add to the bounciness of the buggy,and
of the baby when in the buggy, right?
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I reckon there's no "correct" or "incorrect" in a folk tongue-twister. The question of hyphenation, however, remains in the air (not unlike bouncing babies).
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