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English: Structural analysis of an ambiguous spanish sentence: Pepe vio a Pablo enfurecido (interpretation1: When Pepe was angry, then he saw Pablo / interpretation2: Pepe saw that Pablo was angry). Here, the syntactic tree in figure represents interpretation 1.
In this way, ambiguity is viewed as a generally useful feature of a linguistic system. Linguistic ambiguity can be a problem in law, because the interpretation of written documents and oral agreements is often of paramount importance. Structural analysis of an ambiguous Spanish sentence: Pepe vio a Pablo enfurecido.
Syntactic ambiguity, also known as structural ambiguity, [1] amphiboly, or amphibology, is characterized by the potential for a sentence to yield multiple interpretations due to its ambiguous syntax. This form of ambiguity is not derived from the varied meanings of individual words but rather from the relationships among words and clauses ...
A famous example for lexical ambiguity is the following sentence: "Wenn hinter Fliegen Fliegen fliegen, fliegen Fliegen Fliegen hinterher.", meaning "When flies fly behind flies, then flies fly in pursuit of flies." [40] [circular reference] It takes advantage of some German nouns and corresponding verbs being homonymous. While not noticeable ...
The argument relies on the ambiguity of the word, "pen" which could mean either a writing instrument, or a jail cell. The Probe Positions 1, 2 and 3 indicated in the sentence above indicate the points at which the study participants were presented with a word on a computer screen, in a cross-modal decision task similar to the one described above.
Fixed word order is one out of many ways to ease the processing of sentence semantics and reducing ambiguity. One method of making the speech stream less open to ambiguity (complete removal of ambiguity is probably impossible) is a fixed order of arguments and other sentence constituents. This works because speech is inherently linear.
Lexical ambiguity is a subtype of semantic ambiguity where a word or morpheme is ambiguous. When a lexical ambiguity results from a single word having two senses, it is called polysemy . For instance, the English "foot" is polysemous since in general it refers to the base of an object, but can refer more specifically to the foot of a person or ...
Here are some examples of English sentences and their cleft versions: "I did it." → "It was I who did it" or more colloquially "It was me that did it." "You will stop smoking through willpower." → "It is through willpower that you will stop smoking." Spanish does not usually employ such a structure in simple sentences.