Matakuliah : G0922/Introduction to Linguistics
Tahun
: 2008
Session 12
Syntax 3
LEARNING OUTCOMES
 Students are able to recognize the meaning of ambiguous
sentences
 Students are able to make a tree diagram for ambiguous
sentences
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2
Ambiguity
• Ambiguity : having more than one meanings
• Lexical ambiguity:
– Word which has more than one meaning (homonymy –
polysemy)
Bank : the place for saving money
sides of the river
Fork : instrument for eating
instrument for taking hays
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3
Ambiguity
• Syntactic Ambiguity: a structure is capable or more than
one interpretation.
V-ing + noun often cause syntactic ambiguity
- Visiting relatives can cause problems
- 1: Relatives who visit us can cause problems
- 2: When we visit relatives there can be problems
• Sentences involving ambiguity lead to a problem of
interpretation
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4
Ambiguity
• Sentence ambiguity
– A sentence which can have more than one meanings. The ambiguity of
the sentence does not depend on the ambiguity of the words in the
sentence.
She was watching the colorful ball.
– The sentence is ambiguous because of the ambiguous words ball
– Ball : can mean a round toy and a party
He saw me in the garden.
– In this sentence there is no ambiguous word but the sentence is
ambiguous
– 1: He saw me. It happened in the garden. (He and I were in the garden)
– 2: He saw me. I was in the garden. (He was somewhere else)
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5
Beliefs and attitudes
• The beliefs and attitudes of somebody may influence
his interpretation of a sentence.
– The judge denied the prisoner’s request because
he was cautious.
– The judge denied the prisoner’s request because
he was dangerous.
• The personal pronoun he in the first sentence
is normally interpreted as the judge and he in
the second sentence as the prisoner.
• This happens because the judge is associated to the
good thing and the prisoner to the bad thing.
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6
Setting and discourse
•
•
•
Setting :
– refers to the physical environment when a sentence
is uttered.
– E.g. this, that, those, come, go
Discourse:
– Refers to the connected series of the utterances
produced.
– E.g. A girl is walking along the street. She is very
beautiful
The interpretation of She depends on a girl in the
previous sentence
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7
Interpreting Ambiguous Sentences
• Smoking cigarettes can be nauseating
- smoking cigarettes can make you sick
- fumes from burning cigarette can make you sick
• Terry loves his wife and so do I
- Terry loves his wife and I love his wife too
- Terry loves his wife and I love my wife too
• Biting insect are dangerous
- Insects that bite you are dangerous
- To bite insects is dangerous
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8
Tree diagram
The magician touched the child with the wand
The magician
The
magician
touched the child with the wand
touched
the child with the wand
the child
the
child
with the wand
with
the wand
the
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wand
9
Tree diagram
The magician touched the child with the wand
The magician
The
magician
touched the child with the wand
touched
the child
the
child
with the wand
with
the wand
the
Bina Nusantara University
wand
10