NMTS-Group1
Warning:
The material on this page has been created as part of a seminar. It is still heavily under construction and we do not guarantee its correctness. If you have comments on this page or suggestions for improvement, please contact Manfred Sailer.
This note will be removed once the page has been carefully checked and integrated into the main part of this wiki.
(Back to the group overview)
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
- antonym (definition in Basic Glossary)
- entailment (definition in Basic Glossary)
- homograph (definition in Basic Glossary)
- register (definition in Basic Glossary)
- structural ambiguity (definition in Basic Glossary)
Our podcasts
Our materials for an interactive whiteboard
List all the files that your group created for the interactive whiteboard.
Our pictures
Anna's cat Carlo
Marc M
Nicki
Jellyfishes (Zoo Berlin), Lorena's picture
Leo
Our exercises
- Exercise on types of ambiguities. Link to the exercise (only one example so far).
Exercise I
General definition of ambiguity
a) What is an ambiguous word?
1. a word with only one meaning
2. a polysemous word
3. a homophone word
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 without any further inquiry.
2. There is no bank in this town.
d) Think of three sentences in which the word “hot” has different meanings.
Check your solution!
Exercise II
Different types of ambiguity
a) Also phrases and whole sentences can have more than more than one meaning. How is this form of ambiguity called?
1. Scope Ambiguity
2. Lexical Ambiguity
3. Structural Ambiguity
Comment: good that you link to the definitions here. But the question is not very good, because a sentence can be ambiguous because of a scope ambiguity or a lexical ambiguity, not just because of a scope ambiguity. Please reformulate your question.
b) Which two meanings does the following sentence contain? Paraphrase them.
We need more intelligent administrators.
→ Paraphrases
Comment:
1) give a linguistic characterization of the ambiguity. In reading 1 more is used as the comparative particle, i.e. more intelligent forms one constituent. In reading 2 more is used as a determiner, i.e., it combines with the phrase intelligent administrators.
c) Think of an ambiguous phrase or sentence on your own and explain its ambiguity.
→ Example
Exercise III
Trees
a) Draw the two different trees of the following paraphrase.
poor women and men
→ Trees
b) Draw the two different trees of the following sentence.
Peter read the book on the Eiffel-Tower.
→ Trees
Comment: maybe in b) you could add an explanation which two readings are possible, like you did in a)