The Prophet in the Garden Path: Preference Rules, Cognitive Narratology, and the Book of Jonah

For the past several decades, cognitive linguists have recognized a class of statements known as “garden-path sentences.” The garden-path sentence is one that traps a reader in a processing failure and triggers a reevaluation. A crucial component of the garden-path sentence is the reader’s expectation of how language should work. These linguistic expectations may be referred to as “preference rules.” In an essay entitled, “‘Speak, friend, and enter’: Garden Paths, Artificial Intelligence, and Cognitive Narratology,” Manfred Jahn argues that the garden-path phenomenon may be extended beyond a single sentence to yield a garden-path story. In the garden-path story, the reader’s preference rules again trick the reader into an initial misinterpretation of the story that must later be reevaluated. In this paper, I argue that the book of Jonah may be read as a garden-path story. The gate to this garden path is opened by the sole prophecy of Jonah to Nineveh. The expected reading of this prophecy is: “Forty days more, Nineveh will be destroyed” (Jon 3:4). This reading, however, becomes problematic when Nineveh is not, in fact, destroyed. Nineveh’s repentance and God’s subsequent refusal to destroy the city require a reevaluation not only for the reader but even for the prophet himself. The same preference rule that trapped the reader has trapped Jonah: that the verb hafak necessarily implies destruction. By reevaluating the prophetic statement, the reader may recognize that Nineveh was in fact overturned, but not physically. While less common than shuv, the verb hafak can be used to describe a change of mind or heart (e.g., Hos 11:8). With this understanding, the reader may be able to escape the garden path in which Jonah himself remains trapped.