Comment by mapontosevenths
2 days ago
Why would the cat being comfortable make it sit on a mat?
Many sentences require you to have some knowledge of the world to process. In this case, you need to have the knowledge that "being comfortable dictates where you sit" doesn't happen nearly as often as "where you sit dictates your comfort."
Even for humans NLP is probabilistic, which is why we still often get it wrong. Or at least I know that I do.
Ah, but cats won't just comfortably sit on a mat if they feel there is danger. They will only sit on a mat if they feel comfortable! Absent larger context, the sentence is in fact ambiguous (though I agree your reading is the most natural and obvious one).
But do we usually describe cats as comfortable, as in their feelings? We might say he IS comfortable, or he feels comfort, but for something to be "comfortable" that implies it gives comfort to others. I can see a cat being comfortable to a human, in that a cat gives comfort to a human. But I wouldn't say "The cat is comfortable, therefore he laid on a mat." Its almost a garden path sentence, I would expect "The cat is comfortable, that's why I let him lay on me".
In literary and casual contexts, absolutely (though we'd probably say "he/she" instead of "it" here). As I said, "it" referring to the mat is the most natural and obvious reading, but other ones are perfectly logical and sound, if less likely/common.
Although the sentence is itself a bit awkward and strange on its own, and really needs context. In fact, this is because the sentence is generated as a short example to make a point about attention and tokens, and is not really something someone would utter naturally in isolation.
I mostly just wanted to playfully comment that original GP / top-level comment had a valid point about the ambiguity!
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