You hear what you want to hear
In a language survey, a group of mixed genders were asked to decipher this string of words without adding or taking away any words.
A, woman, without, her, man, is, nothing.
All The men wrote :
"A woman without her man is nothing."
all the women wrote :
"a woman : Without her, a man is nothing."
We attach structures to the words we hear, and in that way, give meaning to the sentence. Further examples found in newspaper headlines are :
"Deer kill 130,000"
"New Housing for the Elderly not dead"
If you have any doubts as to what they mean, drop me an email, I'd be happy to explain it to you.