many-colored flowers

[navi tasan]

1) The field was covered with many-colored flowers.
2) The field was covered with multicolored flowers.

Can we tell if each flower has many colors or if there are flowers of different colors but each flower has one color?

3) The schoolchildren had many-colored jackets.
4) The schoolchildren had multicolored jackets.

Can we tell if each jacket has many colors or if there are jackets of different colors but each jacket has one color?

I think in the case of flowers each flower has one color or maybe two, but in the case of jackets things are not necessarily clear.

I think a many-colored flower is rare. A motley jacket is not. I think one would just assume that a flower has one or two colors.

 

[Tarheel]

If you mean to say the field was covered with flowers of various colors then say exactly that. You can use the same word with the other sentence, this: "The children wore jackets of various colors."

 

[jutfrank]

I don't think 'Can we tell?' is the right question. You should rather ask 'What would you take these uncontextualised, artificial sentences to mean?'

What exactly are you trying to do? Is it as simple as trying to understand how to use the words 'multi-coloured' and 'many-coloured'?

 

[Barque]

I think in the case of flowers each flower has one color or maybe two, but in the case of jackets things are not necessarily clear.

We go by logic and context.

It's possible that you might see different flowers of different colours growing alongside each other. And it isn't usual for a single flower to have more than one or two colours.

Schoolchilden often wear uniforms. If their uniform jackets are described as multi-coloured I'd understand that each jacket was the same multi-coloured design.
If the jackets aren't part of a uniform, I'd assume that the jackets were all mainly of one colour each, as they usually are, but that they weren't all the same as each other.

 

[navi tasan]

Thank you all very much.

I am obsessed with ambiguity. I just like to know which sentences are ambiguous. I know that in all languages (or at the very least in a great number of them, including mine) there are ambiguous sentences. I also know that in general context will clarify the meaning of an ambiguous sentence. That doesn't mean ambiguity doesn't exist or is not interesting or should not be examined by linguists.

 

[jutfrank]

Okay, I see.

Here are the semantics:

The words multicoloured and many-coloured are synonyms. If something is multicoloured, it has multiple colours.

a multicoloured raincoat

This is one raincoat that has lots of colours on it.

multicoloured raincoats

This is more than one raincoat, each raincoat with lots of colours on it. In your examples, each flower and each jacket has lots of colours. There's no ambiguity anywhere.

Remember that ambiguity is a feature of sentence meaning (and sometimes word meaning), not speaker meaning. This is a really important point. What a sentence means and what a speaker means when using a sentence can be completely different, opposite, even.

So try to make it clear whether you're asking what a particular sentence means, or what a typical listener would probably understand by a particular sentence.

 

[Barque]

This is more than one raincoat, each raincoat with lots of colours on it.

Couldn't you also use the word for multiple raincoats of different colours, but each of a single colour?

 

[emsr2d2]

Couldn't you also use the word for multiple raincoats of different colours, but each of a single colour?

No.