Sabtu, 02 April 2016
AMBIGUITy
DEFINITION OF AMBIGUITY
A word, phrase,
or sentence is ambiguous if it has more than one meaning Ambiguity occurs when a language element has more than one
meaning. Ambiguity is when the meaning of a word, phrase, orsentence is
uncertain. There could be more than one meaning.
TYPES OF AMBIGUITY
There
are two types of ambiguity, lexical and structural.
Lexical ambiguity is by far the more common.
Everyday examples include nouns like 'chip', 'pen' and 'suit', verbs like
'call', 'draw' and 'run', and adjectives like 'deep', 'dry' and 'hard'. There
are various tests for ambiguity.Structural ambiguity occurs when a pharase or sentence has more than one underlying structure, such as the pharases" Tibetan history teacher",'a student of high moral principles' and 'short men and women'. and the sentences the girl hit the boy with a book' and 'visiting relatives can be boring'.These ambiguities are said to be structural because each such pharase can be represented in two structurally different ways.
consider the structurally ambigous sentence " The chiken is ready eat " which could be use describe either a hungry chiken or a broiled chiken it is arguable the operative reading depends on wheather or not the implicit subject of the infinitive clause" to eat" is tied anaphorically to the subject ( the chiken ) of the main clause
.
.
EXAMPLE OF AMBIGUITY
- · Sarah gave a bath to her dog wearing a pink t-shirt.
Ambiguity: Is the dog wearing the pink t-shirt?
- · I have never tasted a cake quite like that one before!
Ambiguity: Was the cake good or bad?
- · Did you see her dress?
- Ambiguity: Is she getting dressed or are they talking about her clothes?
- · A good life depends on a liver – Liver may be an organ or simply a living person.
Refference : literarydevices.net/ambiguity/
softschools.com/examples/examples/ambiguity
https://www.teachit.co.uk/armoore/lang/semantics.htm
