A baby died after escaping from a truck while visiting a central
Arkansas military base for a family event.
Not really a newsworthy tragedy since millions of babies die every year all over the world. Still, it must have been a tragic event for the baby's relatives and at least a traumatic one for those present at the mentioned family event.
Except that it wasn't because in the above quoted sentence I omitted one word. Here is the complete headline as it was published by AP (italics mine):
A baby kangaroo died after escaping from a truck while visiting a central
Arkansas military base for a family event.
Now start with the trivial observation that kangaroos can no more visit family events at military bases than they can visit friends in state prisons or grandparents in retirement homes. Then count the questions one can ask about the meaning of this sentence. If you think of language as a biological organism's most important evolutionary gift, this brief exercise will take you right back to what you started with: the tragedy of death, albeit this time the rapidly approaching death of language.
