The English language is the most spoken globally when including non-native speakers. As we speak, there are 1.4 billion people on the planet using English.
Being quite flexible and relatively easy to learn are two things that contributed to making
English the international language. However, it often presents strange and unique grammatical constructions that, while technically correct, can be highly confusing for readers or listeners.
A sentence like “Time flies like an arrow” is syntactically ambiguous, as it could have different meanings depending on how the reader or listener interprets each word.
In this article, we will cover the topic of grammatically correct yet confusing sentences in greater detail.
What Makes a Sentence Grammatically Correct?
When identifying weird, grammatically correct sentences, one must first define what is grammatically correct.
A grammatically correct sentence is a sentence that follows all the rules and conventions of English grammar, meaning it is composed of adequately ordered phrases and words.
Here are some examples of grammatically correct sentences.
• “They walked to the park.”
• “He works at the gas station.”
• “He likes to watch movies.”
Grammatically correct sentences can be made up of words with the same or different meanings and are part of speech readings. They can also contain reduced relative clauses, false syntax, and empty criticism.
One could interpret the sentence “I’m loving it” in two different ways. The first would be a statement expressing an emotion. The second interpretation would be a witty joke or remark.
It’s important to make clear that a sentence can follow English grammar rules and still not make any factual sense. This would be the case of sentences like “My horse has wings” or “He lived for 500 years”.
