A Verbal Illusion

Abstract

The sentence, No head injury is too trivial to be ignored, tends to be systematically misconstrued to mean that one should not ignore head injuries. It is argued that the sentence is anomalous in two ways. It is semantically anomalous because the relation between the adjective and the verb is the same as in the sentence, No sinner is too wicked to be condemned. It is pragmatically anomalous because the relation between the noun and the verb expresses an injunction which is inconsistent with commonly held beliefs. An experiment was conducted to investigate the effect of this pragmatic anomaly on comprehension. Four pragmatic and four non-pragmatic sentences were paraphrased. The prediction was confirmed that the pragmatic sentences were paraphrased more accurately than the non-pragmatic sentences. Some alternative explanations are considered.