syntax - Are Japanese modifiers "greedy", "anti-greedy", or do they mean whatever people choose them to mean?

(I'm a beginner. I just started learning Japanese about a month before I wrote this.)

The Japanese Wikipedia article 飛べない鳥, which corresponds to the English Wikipedia article Flightless bird, has the sentence

ペンギンはよく[知られている]{しられている}[飛べない]{とべない}[鳥]{とり}の[一例]{イチレイ}である

which I parse as

ペンギンは（（よく知られている飛べない鳥）の（一例））である

which translates to

Penguins are an example of well-known flightless birds.

where "well-known" modifies "flightless birds", but I think I can also parse the sentence as

ペンギンは（（よく知られている）（（飛べない鳥）の（一例）））である

which translates to

Penguins are a well-known example of flightless birds.

where "well-known" modifies "example of flightless birds", which is also the case in the English Wikipedia. I think both interpretations make sense.

If I were to translate the second English sentence to Japanese, I would write (without the parentheses)

ペンギンは（（飛べない鳥）の（よく知られている一例））である

that is, I would place "well-known" as close as syntactically possible to "example".

The questions:

Which parsing is the correct one (regardless of what is in the English Wikipedia)?

Are Japanese modifiers "greedy" (modifies as large part as possible), "anti-greedy" (a.k.a. "non-greedy", modifies as small part as possible), or do they mean whatever people choose them to mean?

Answer

Unfortunately, there is no easy and clear rule to determine which parsing strategy is correct. The general rule is "Choose the shortest and simplest parsing strategy as long as it makes sense". It depends on the context, your vocabulary, and your common sense.

But please don't worry too much — English speakers also do similar things every day. Compare "the price of the lunch I ate" and "the price of the lunch I paid". Noticed that the relative clause at the end is being more "greedy" in the latter phrase?

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So let's examine よく知られている飛べない鳥の一例. The three modifiers are よく知られている ("well-known"), 飛べない ("flightless", "which cannot fly") and 鳥の ("of birds").

Technically speaking, this is one possible interpretation:

• （よく知られている）（（飛べない）（鳥の一例））
  a well-known example which cannot fly and is about birds

In general, this is not a rare grammatical pattern at all. But you seem to have unconsciously rejected this interpretation because you know it's nonsense to talk about whether 'an example' flies or not.

Between the two remaining interpretations:

• （よく知られている）（（飛べない鳥の）一例）
  a well-known example of flightless birds


• （（よく知られている）飛べない鳥の）一例
  an example of well-known flightless birds

I prefer the former interpretation and the corresponding translation. While the latter may seem grammatically simpler, I feel the author is talking about a famous example, not about certain famous birds. But in this case, perhaps the meaning of the sentence won't change drastically either way.

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Here are some more examples of "greedy" modifiers which may seem tricky at first. The only way to choose the right interpretation is to user your common sense.

• 寿司を食べているスーツを着た男
  ("a man in a suit eating sushi" — this is ambiguous also in English, but of course you don't read this as "a man wearing a sushi-eating suit")


• 昨日私が食べた子どもが作った料理
  (It's "the dish I ate yesterday", not "the child I ate yesterday")


• 辞書で聞いた単語を調べた。