| Syntactic Ambiguity |
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Information AboutSyntactic Ambiguity |
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Syntactic ambiguity is a property of Sentence s which may be reasonably interpreted in more that one way, or reasonably interpreted to mean more than one thing. Ambiguity may or may not involve one word having two parts of speech or Homonym s. Syntactic ambiguity arises not from the range of meanings of single words, but from the relationship between the words and clauses of a sentence, and the sentence structure implied thereby. When a reader can reasonably interpret the same sentence as having more than one possible structure, the text is Equivocal and meets the definition of syntactic ambiguity. CONTRAST Syntactic ambiguity can be contrasted with semantic ambiguity. The former represents multiple ways to infer the underlying structure of an entire sentence. The latter represents multiple ways to define individual words within a sentence (Layman E. Allen "Some Uses of Symbolic Logic in Law Practice" 1962J M.U.L.L. 119, at 120; and L.E. Allen & M.E. Caldwell "Modern Logic and Judicial Decision Making: A Sketch of One View" in H.W. Baade (ed.) "Jurimetrics" Basic Books Inc., New York, USA, 1963, 213, at 228). EXAMPLES Here are some examples: Bear left at zoo I'm going to sleep The word of the Lord came to Zechariah, son of Berekiah, son of Iddo, the prophet. British Left waffles on Falklands The cow was found by a stream by a farmer. Monty flies back to front. Flying planes can be dangerous. Train on fire, passengers alight. The Electric Light Orchestra (The following two are actually examples of scope ambiguities -- which operator is logically 'above' the other. Some linguistic theories consider them syntactic ambiguities, while other linguistics theories consider them semantic ambiguities.) Someone ate every tomato. Sally can not go to the movies. A surgeon general's warning on packs of cigarettes in the United States reads, "Quitting smoking now greatly reduces your risk of cancer." (Quitting smoking today will reduce your risk of cancer; It is now the case (but was not in the past) that quitting smoking reduces the chance of cancer) A noteworthy example in the field of computer natural language processing is ''Time flies like an arrow.'' Although humans unambiguously understand it to mean "Time flies in the same way that an arrow does," it could also mean:
(As Groucho Marx is said to have observed, "Time flies like an arrow; fruit flies like a banana.") In legal disputes, Court s may be asked to interpret the meaning of syntactic ambiguities in statutes or contracts. In some instances, arguments asserting highly unlikely interpretations have been deemed Frivolous . EXTERNAL LINKS |
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