I am a member of Facebook buy/sell/swap/free group in my local area. One member is selling an item of furniture with the explanation:
Must sell father in nursing home
Just … no.
Never Pure and Rarely Simple
Random thoughts about language, life, the universe and everything
Never Pure and Rarely Simple 
Ahhhh! Another hilarious example of having all of the right words in the sentence, just in the wrong order. When I was in grammar school, one of my favorite sentence mistake to come across was the dangling participle. Throw the cow over the fence some hay, for example. Selling one’s father certainly falls in the right lane.
You’ve had several examples of delightful ambiguity lately.
Thanks.
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I don’t think it’s about word order, but about sentences, including full stops and a capital letter, and leaving words out. I would reconstruct it as:
Must sell father in nursing home
Must sell. Father in nursing home.
I must sell this. My father is in a nursing home. I need money.
I could *just* accept ‘Throw the cow over the fence some hay’ *if* ‘the cow over the fence’ identifies one particular cow. Imagine that we have two cows. One follows us around and the other is in a paddock. You might say ‘Handfeed this cow with caviar and throw (the cow over the fence) some hay’. It would need that much context, though.
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It just occurred to me that there’s another interpretation: I must sell my father in a nursing home, not anywhere else.
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