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Usually, semantic and syntactic ambiguity go hand in hand. The sentence "We saw her duck" is also syntactically ambiguous. Conversely, a sentence like "He ate the cookies on the couch" is also semantically ambiguous. Rarely, but occasionally, the different parsings of a syntactically ambiguous phrase result in the same meaning.
from construe: the assigning of meaning to ambiguous terms road construction and maintenance work; roadwork ("a construction area/zone") (UK: roadworks) cooker an appliance for cooking food (US: cookstove, stove, range) a cooking apple, a large sour apple used in cooking
For example, it is common to explain an unfamiliar term by using "or" and a familiar synonym in parentheses: "the orca (or killer whale) ...". To someone unfamiliar with the subject this can be ambiguous, suggesting an alternative; compare the valid sentences "A seal pup may be eaten by an orca (or killer whale)."
Synonym list in cuneiform on a clay tablet, Neo-Assyrian period [1] A synonym is a word, morpheme, or phrase that means precisely or nearly the same as another word, morpheme, or phrase in a given language. [2] For example, in the English language, the words begin, start, commence, and initiate are all synonyms of one another: they are ...
Synonyms of "verbosity" include wordiness, verbiage, prolixity, grandiloquence, garrulousness, ... Circumlocution – Ambiguous or roundabout figure of speech;
The term antonym (and the related antonymy) is commonly taken to be synonymous with opposite, but antonym also has other more restricted meanings. Graded (or gradable) antonyms are word pairs whose meanings are opposite and which lie on a continuous spectrum (hot, cold).
In other combinations with this stem, e.g. synonym, it is never elided. Therefore, hyperonym is etymologically more faithful than hypernym. [15] Hyperonymy is used, for instance, by John Lyons, who does not mention hypernymy and prefers superordination. [16]
The higher the number of synonyms a word has, the higher the degree of ambiguity. [1] Like other kinds of ambiguity, semantic ambiguities are often clarified by context or by prosody. One's comprehension of a sentence in which a semantically ambiguous word is used is strongly influenced by the general structure of the sentence. [2]