NMTS-Group1
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Ambiguity (Group 1)
Comments by the NMTS team
- nicht existente Glossary Einträge zu ambiguity, lexical ambiguity, polysemy
- Podcast: Eintrag zu NMTS_Meeting_10 überflüssig
- Interactive Whiteboard Material fehlt
- Pictures: hier fehlen _eigentlich_ die Bilder zu den Exercises, allerdings wäre es wohl nicht so sinnvoll, die Lösungen zu den Aufgaben zu posten. Also ist das schon gut so, denk ich.
- Exercises: Link zu Deiner Übung nach Copy&Paste übrig geblieben
- auch in den Antworten der Übungen sind Links zu den oben genannten Glossary Einträgen
- Short description: Only mentions lexical and structural ambiguity…. maybe add other types of ambiguity or say why you only talk about these two types.
- Glossary entry: Register: Examples: write rather "father vs. dad" (instead of "dad vs. father") so that it corresponds to "formal vs. informal"
- Glossary entry: structural ambiguity entry not completed
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
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) Phrases and sentences as a whole can have more than one meaning. How is this form of ambiguity called?
1. Scope Ambiguity
2. Lexical Ambiguity
3. Structural Ambiguity
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