The Santaback: An Ambiguous Figure of Speech

Here's an interesting question from Lynn.

"Hi, my name is Lynn, and I'm calling with a question about the use of an apostrophe. I'm wondering if there's a special term for the usage where an apostrophe can indicate either a contraction or a possessive form, and I have two examples of that from my own small town. A hardware store which has been there for over 50 years has a wooden sign that hangs on the front porch that says 'Today's special,' and below that is another wooden sign that says 'So is tomorrow.' And the other example is a local house that has a Christmas decoration in the form of a wooden cut-out of Santa Claus seen from behind, and it just says 'Santa's back.' I've always gotten a kick out of those usages because it always tricks you into thinking that it means either possessive or a contraction, but you can't really tell necessarily from the usage. Anyway, thanks. I enjoy reading your stuff and always look forward to it. Bye."

Thanks, Lynn! This was tougher to figure out than I expected it to be, and I turned to my language friends on Twitter for help because it turns out that there are a few different things your examples are almost like.

Garden-Path Sentences

The first one is what's called a garden-path sentence, so called because the sentence leads you down the garden path and then tricks you by ending up somewhere you didn't expect to be. It's a lot like a concept in comedy called the reverse. 

A common example of a garden-path sentence is "The old man the boat." Because "old man" is a common phrase, you think the sentence is going to be about an old man, but it's actually using "man" as a verb meaning something like "to serve as the crew": The old serve as the crew on the boat. It led you down the old-man garden path, and then switcharoo—we're talking about something else!

Your examples could fall into this category, but they don't fit exactly. In particular, a linguist named Alicia Stevers stressed that garden-path sentences have to be single sentences, and the "Today's special" signboard really feels like two sentences since the two parts are written on two different boards, and then only one interpretation of "Santa's back" is a sentence.

Crash Blossoms

A similar language trick or problem is called a crash blossom, which is a term that usually seems to be reserved for confusing headlines. The name comes from this confusing headline...

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