Our brains are pretty adept at resolving such ambiguities through context, implicit rules of pragmatics, etc. Sentence (2) may be less syntactically ambiguous but longer range dependencies, at a certain point, run up against hard limits in our ability to keep things in short term memory.

A somewhat related example is center embedding structures, which are grammatical but usually quite difficult to parse once you get a few levels deep:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Center_embedding

Good point. It seems that in the first case, "sitting in the kitchen" is a restrictive clause and we might want to have "John threw out the old trash that was sitting in the kitchen." to eliminate ambiguity. However, this clashes with DLM. The second case would be better as "Sitting in the kitchen, John threw out the old trash." I think they gave a bad example.

> Yes, (1) is easier to parse (and I prefer it) but (2) is less ambiguous

Neither is ambiguous, "the old trash sitting in the kitchen" is unambiguously the direct object in #1; to make "sitting in the kitchen" apply to the subject (John) rather than being part of the phrase identifying the direct object, you'd need either to relocate it and set it off with commas ("John, sitting in the kitchen, threw out the old trash"), or add a "while" ("John threw out the old trash while sitting in the kitchen").

> could equally well mean that John threw the trash out while he was sitting in the kitchen

Not a grammar expert and may be wrong, but I think technically it's unambiguous because you do actually need the while to make John the subject of the verb 'sitting' in that sentence.

Of course you're right that in practice, especially in speech, it could be taken either way and is thus definitely ambiguous. One could argue that's all that matters, I certainly would, but just to be pedantic I thought I'd point this out ;-)

Got a good following here, everyone's commenting on the less ambiguous aspect, which I'd like to throw out the term amphiboly. We're speaking of an amphiboly in these sentences, which makes me wonder after reading all the commentary what a test would be for resolving amphibolies unambiguously using rules of grammar as folks have dived into in the commentary.

Much like Groucho Marx:

"I shot an elephant in my pajamas... how he got into my pajamas I'll never know."

That's similar to what I was thinking, but I've learned to question my natural writing style after realizing that most people find it confusing.

And yes the article seems to be more about language patterns that give your brain a break than language in general.

Wouldn't there be a comma if he was sitting in the kitchen? Isn't there an old adage as well, "don't end a sentence with a preposition"?

edit: Apparently that's an old wives tale, the preposition one.

That's the kind of grammar prescription up with which we will not put.

While I agree that the rule "Thou shall not end a sentence with a preposition." seems to be a borrowed Latinate prescription and is at variance with modern English usage, inhale, deep breath, I think your example of using the phrasal verb (put up with), though common, to demonstrate your point is not a good example. :)

If we consider put-up-with as a verb that just so happens to be a compound verb-postposition-postposition _unit_ then the sentence "That's the kind of grammar prescription which we will not put up with" actually ends in a verb. If you see what I mean. Does this make sense? I'm just punting this intuitively.

I'm trying to think of an actual case where a bare adpositional word terminates a sentence... which is not in question form... and I can only think poetic uses... and after having Googled a bit... verb+prep or phrasal verb or question are the only examples I've _come across_. :)

  s/which/that/

Sorry, but that drives me crazy. I think your "verb+prep" gives the game away, as that is very common idiom. What about this: "That's the store we got the candy from." Perhaps a sentence using "where" would be more stylish, but you can't very well throw out a prescription of grammar just to immediately replace it with one of style.

Do you mean where I said, "which is not in question form..." I should've said, "that is not in question form..." My inner ear is not ringing any alarm bells there. Care to explain?

I like your example. Never mind about style. I can riff on that: "There's the table we put the apple on.", "Here's the bag I keep my laptop in." And so on. Nice!

I would have sworn that your "verb that just so happens" was once something like "verb which just so happens". Hmmm.

The adage I'm familiar with is "A preposition is something you shouldn't end a sentence with". It goes hand in hand with "If any word is improper at the end of a sentence, a linking verb is".

In case you were wondering about the origins of this idea: http://itre.cis.upenn.edu/~myl/languagelog/archives/004454.h....

In languages with accusative / dative or some other cases it's easier to see what is the object and what is the subject.