General Discussion

I've always liked garden-path sentenced.

The horse raced around the barn fell down.

Or multiple subordinated clauses: The dog the kid the mother saw fed barked. (Lots don't like that kind of subordination--they can handle 1 layer, "The dog the kid fed barked" but lose the thread with the 2nd level.)

Once was reading something in German and I just couldn't get a sentence to cohere. Took it to a native speaker. She read it. Read the paragraph it was in. Read the sentence again. Read the sentence again. Out loud. Then again, with different pauses. Finally got it to click. It was the three verbs at the end and unpacking the structure(s) embedded before them that threw her/me/us. Formal, academic German.

(Russian can pull off some doozies, either because of the syntax that's there or the widespread variety of elliptical devices and zero-copula. English-learners also don't like things like pseudogapping, esp. if their verbal morphology involves suffixes: "They have been eating the apples more than they have the oranges" (ex. from Wiki). Last thing I read about ellipsis was Marjorie McShane's diss, but that's been more than 20 years ago.)