List of linguistic example sentences
The following is a partial list of linguistic example sentences illustrating various linguistic phenomena. Ambiguity. Different types of ambiguity which are possible in language. Lexical ambiguity. Demonstrations of words which have multiple meanings dependent on context. Syntactic ambiguity. Demonstrations of ambiguity between alternative syntactic structures underlying a sentence. Syntactic ambiguity, incrementality, and local coherence. Demonstrations of how "incremental" and (at least partially) "local" syntactic parsing leads to infelicitous constructions and interpretations. Punctuation. Punctuation can be used to introduce ambiguity or misunderstandings where none needed to exist. One well known example, for comedic effect, is from  A Midsummer Night's Dream by William Shakespeare (ignoring the punctuation provides the alternate reading). This adjectival order is an example of the "Royal Order of Adjectives". Word order. Ending sentence with preposition. Some prescriptive grammar prohibits "preposition stranding": ending sentences with prepositions. Neurolinguistics. Sentences with unexpected endings. Comparative illusion: Combinatorial complexity. Demonstrations of sentences which are unlikely to have ever been said, although the combinatorial complexity of the linguistic system makes them possible. Semantics and context. Demonstrations of sentences where the semantic interpretation is bound to context or knowledge of the world. Relevance conditionals. Conditionals where the prejacent ("if  clause) is not strictly required for the consequent to be true. Non-English examples. Persian. A famous example for lexical ambiguity in Persian is the following sentence: It can be read either as: which means Forgiveness, you don't have to execute him/her" Or as: which means "No need to forgiveness, execute her/him"