What is "ambiguous " mean in syntax?

[aroma]

HIIIIIIIIII all

I need your help ... do you know the anwer of this question

What is "ambiguous " mean in syntax?

please help me .. I want it today

thaaaaaaaaaaanks alot

[Mariner]

One example would be the phrase

An American History professor

The reason is that you don't know whether it refers to a History professor who is an American citizen, or to a teacher of American History.

Other example:

The parents of the bride and the groom are already here

You can't tell whether it means that the parents of the bride and the parents of the groom are here, or that the groom himself and the parents of the bride are here.

[aroma]

Originally Posted by Mariner

One example would be the phrase

An American History professor

The reason is that you don't know whether it refers to a History professor who is an American citizen, or to a teacher of American History.

Other example:

The parents of the bride and the groom are already here

You can't tell whether it means that the parents of the bride and the parents of the groom are here, or that the groom himself and the parents of the bride are here.

excllent explanition ...thanks alot

but I want a definition for this term ...can you help please ..

I will be so thankfull for you

[aroma]

please help me

[BobK]

Originally Posted by aroma

please help me

Sorry Aroma, but you've used the words yourself - I guess that's why nobody has responded. The examples given are syntactically ambiguous.

Syntactically - relating to the way words are put together in meaningful ways
Ambiguous - having two or more possible meanings

The reason people specify that a certain kind of ambiguity is syntactical is that there are other sorts of ambiguity.

b

[aroma]

thanks alot Bobk

[drhatch]

Hi all

On the whole sentence-level 'ambiguity' is a product of restricting one's analysis to sentences. In what we conversation analysts use to call 'natural language utterances>discourse, most such supposed 'ambiguity' does not exist for the creaters, listeners/readers involved.

In other words, most 'ambiguity' is a product of bad analysis and bad teaching.


I realise this is late for the original query, but it is a 'hardy perennial' in applied linguistics and TEFl/TESL

[chtylmz]

can we say that its meaning is same with unsteady??

[moddy]

Salam 3alekom/ Good evening
If we want to talk about the concept of ambiguity ,we need to clarify an important thing .



The synagmatic axis is more concerned with the structural chain of lexical items ; whether they fit together or not .
For example , [good the boy ]NP is , syntagmatically speaking, ambigious despite its meaning is quite absorbed .
In this case , this NP would be syntactically ambigious .

On the other hand , the paradigmatic axis is more concerned with the meaningful choise of the lexical items in a given language .
For example , [ the beautiful man ] NP is, syntactically speaking , but , however, it is, paradigmatically speaking ,
ambigious .
So the concept of Ambiguity is not restricted to Syntax , but it could easily include Semantics .

[bianca]

Originally Posted by moddy

So the concept of Ambiguity is not restricted to Syntax , but it could easily include Semantics .

...lexical ambiguity as well. Syntax ambiguity is also called grammatical ambiguity or structural ambiguity.


Ex. of lexical ambiguity (often in headlines): Teacher strikes idle kids.
(strike - noun, idle - verb)

The meaning is that the walkout of teachers has left pupils idle.