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Ambiguity (Group 1)

Overview

Members

Short description of the topic

Ambiguity is an extremely widespread phenomenon on which many puns and jokes are based on.

It can be differentiated between lexical and structural ambiguity. Lexical ambiguity is defined as words having multiple meanings.
Example:
Is life worth living? It depends on the liver.

Structural ambiguity arises when the syntactic structure of a sentence allows more than one meaning.
Example:
rich women and men: [rich women] and men or rich [women or men]
Anna saw tourists with binoculars.: Anna saw [tourists with binoculars] or Anna saw [tourists] with binoculars.

A double meaning is created on the lexical or structural level of meaning by:

References and links

References

  • Bieswanger, Markus & Annette Becker. 2006. Introduction to English Linguistics (3rd edition). Tübingen and Basel: A. Francke Verlag.
  • Kortmann, Bernd. 2005. English Linguistics: Essentials. Berlin: Cornelsen Verlag.
  • Fromkin, Victoria; Rodman, Robert & Hyams, Nina. 2003. An Introduction to Language (7th edition). Boston: Thomson Heinle.
  • Matthias Bauer, Joachim Knape, Peter Koch, Susanne Winkler (2010): Dimensionen der Ambiguität. Zeitschrift für Literaturwissenschaft und Linguistik 158, 7-75.

Links

Our e-learning objects

Our wikipages

Our podcasts

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Podcast on Lexical Ambiguity

NMTS_Meeting_10

Our materials for an interactive whiteboard

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Our exercises

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  • Exercise I

a) What is an ambiguous word?
1. a word with only meaning
2. a polysemous word, i.e. a sound sequence that has two or more different, but semantically related meanings
3. a homophone word, i.e. a form that has two or more distinct meanings, but is pronounced in the same way

b) What is the technical term for words that have more than one meaning?
1. scope ambiguity
2. lexical ambiguity
3. structural ambiguity

c) Which word is the ambiguous word in the sentence?
1. I bought it.
2. There is no bank in this town.

d) Can you explain the ambiguity in c) by paraphrasing the sentences?

e) Think of three sentences in which the word “hot” has different meanings.


  • Exercise II

a) Also phrases and whole sentences can have more than more than one meaning. How is this form of ambiguity called?

b) Which two meanings does the following sentence contain? Paraphrase them.
We need more intelligent administrators.

c) Draw the two different trees of the following paraphrase.
poor women and men

d) Draw the two different trees of the following sentence.
Peter saw the girl with binoculars.

e) Think of an ambiguous phrase or sentence on your own and explain its ambiguity.