The perils of argument placement

Yes, it's time for another semi-grumpy look at Sic!. This time,

Gerry X shook his head over a Fox News online headline on 26 September: "Jury Convicts New York Man of Killing Wife for the Second Time". He comments, "I thought you only got to die once. Silly me."*

Silly Gerry indeed. The most plausible reading is that he's been convicted twice for the same, single murder - perhaps the first verdict was overturned. (This is, in fact, the real meaning). But Fox News land is hardly a place where men don't get married a second time. Another possible meaning here is that he's murdered two wives.

It's true, moving the "for the second time" up to the front of the sentence, as WKTV News did, "For second time, jury convicts man of killing wife" removes some putative ambiguity. So would simply swapping the position of the arguments to "convicts man for the second time of killing his wife." Both of those are better than the one as written - which, though not genuinely ambiguous (all possible fixes leave it unclear whether the second conviction is for the same dead wife or not), does lead people with too much time on their hands to pretend it is.

But I said "semi-grumpy look". The truth is that this time Gerry's got a point. Oh, not with this actual headline; no one can be murdered twice. But with this construction. After all, a sentence such as Jury Convicts New York Man of Robbing Store for the Second Time actually does have that ambiguity. In fact, you'd be very surprised, reading the story that went with this one, if it turned out to be a second conviction rather than a second robbery.

The default reading is for that PP beginning with "for" to be attached to the closest noun. It's our real-world knowledge that makes us laugh at the headline, or at someone who insists on reading it with the default syntax. English allows a lot of structural ambiguity, and if you let yourself write sentences where the context disambiguates, you'll find yourself writing ones where it doesn't.

* ps - for a look at adjectives with pronouns, check this post on Literal Minded, and don't forget to click through on all the links, there and the referenced one too.