Ambiguity

If a sentence is ambiguous, it can have more than one meaning. There are many types of ambiguity. For example, in the following sentence the word bank could mean the edge of a river, or a financial institution:

John went to the bank.

This is called lexical ambiguity because it is the result of one of the words having more than one possible meaning. This next sentence is syntactically ambiguous (the syntax, or grammar, can be understood in more than one way):

Put the box on the table in the kitchen.

Is the box already on the table, and to be put in the kitchen? Or is the box to be put on the table which is in the kitchen? From the sentence alone we cannot tell. Try reading the following sentences. They are called garden path sentences because they are easily misunderstood (they lead you down the garden path) even though they are all grammatical! Don't worry if some of these sentences seem like nonsense at first (you have been garden pathed); they will be explained below. 1. The prime number few. 2. Fat people eat accumulates. 3. The cotton clothing is usually made of grows in Mississippi. 4. Until the police arrest the drug dealers control the street. 5. The man who hunts ducks out on weekends. 6. When Fred eats food gets thrown. 7. Mary gave the child the dog bit a bandaid. 8. The girl told the story cried. 9. I convinced her children are noisy. 10. Helen is expecting tomorrow to be a bad day. 11. The horse raced past the barn fell. 12. I know the words to that song about the queen don't rhyme. 13. She told me a little white lie will come back to haunt me. 14. The dog that I had really loved bones. 15. That Jill is never here hurts. 16. The man who whistles tunes pianos. 17. The old man the boat. 18. Have the students who failed the exam take the supplementary. 19. The raft floated down the river sank. 20. We painted the wall with cracks. 21. The tycoon sold the offshore oil tracts for a lot of money wanted to kill JR. All of these sentences are grammatical. Did you understand them all? Unless you are a linguist who has studied syntax and garden path sentences, the answer is probably "no".
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Here the sentences are clarified by adding some extra words: 1. The prime (people) number few. 2. (The) fat (that) people eat accumulates (in their bodies). 3. The cotton (that) clothing is usually made of grows in Mississippi. 4. Until the police (make the) arrest, the drug dealers control the street. 5. The man, who hunts (animals), ducks out on weekends. 6. When Fred eats (his dinner) food gets thrown. 7. Mary gave the child (that) the dog bit a bandaid. 8. The girl (who was) told the story, cried. 9. I convinced her (that) children are noisy. 10. Helen is expecting (for) tomorrow to be a bad day. 11. The horse (which was) raced past the barn, fell (down). 12. I know (that) the words to that song about the queen don't rhyme. 13. She told me (that) a little white lie will come back to haunt me. 14. The dog that I had (as a pet) really loved bones. 15. (The fact) that Jill is never here hurts (me). 16. The man who whistles (all the time) tunes pianos (for a living). 17. The old (people) man the boat. 18. (Please) have the students who failed the exam take the supplementary. 19. The raft (that was) floated down the river, sank. 20. We painted the wall (that was covered) with cracks. 21. The tycoon, (who was) sold the offshore oil tracts for a lot of money, wanted to kill JR. Notice that there are two types of ambiguous sentence: either there is a local ambiguity (one that is cleared up once you have heard the whole sentence) or it is a global ambiguity (one that remains even after the entire sentence has been heard). Garden Path sentences normally have local ambiguity.

Locally ambiguous: The old train... "Train" could be a noun ("The old train left the station") or a verb ("The old train the young"). Globally ambiguous: I know more beautiful women than Julia Roberts. This could mean "I know women more beautiful than Julia Roberts" or "I know more beautiful women than Julia Roberts does".

Perhaps you can come up with your own ambiguous grammatical sentences that trick the brain into getting confused. We'd be interested to hear your garden path suggestions; please send them to us.

1 Examples of Ambiguity
Listed below are some headlines that exhibit at least one of three kinds of ambiguity -- lexical (part-of-speech), syntactic (structural), and semantic. In some of these examples -- all from

actual newspaper headlines -- the unintended meaning is so strong that, on first reading, it overshadows the intended one. drunk gets nine months in violin case Iraqi head seeks arms prostitutes appeal to pope teacher strikes idle kids squad helps dog bite victim enraged cow injures farmer with ax miners refuse to work after death juvenile court to try shooting defendant stolen painting found by tree two Soviet ships collide, one dies two sisters reunited after 18 years in checkout counter
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2 Analysis of Ambiguity 2.1 Semantic Ambiguity

Headline:
Iraqi head seeks arms

Ambiguity type: Semantic. Identification and explanation: The homograph "head" can be interpreted as a noun meaning either chief or the anatomical head of a body. Likewise, the homograph "arms" can be interpreted as a plural noun meaning either weapons or body parts. What makes headline humorous: The headline can easily be read as a disembodied head searching for arms (body parts) or wanting to have them attached. Computational Resolution: The ambiguity could be resolved for a computer parser by specifying in the lexical entry for each item its semantic features.

2.2 Lexical Ambiguity

Headline:
Teacher strikes idle kids

Ambiguity type: Lexical (part of speech or category ambiguity).

Identification and explanation: "strikes" can occur as either an verb meaning to hit or a noun meaning a refusal to work. Meantime, "idle" can occur as either an verb or an adjective. What makes headline humorous: The headline can easily be read as "teacher hits idle kids' even though it was meant to mean that the walkout of teachers has left pupils idle.

2.3 Structural Ambiguity

Headline:
Stolen painting found by tree

Ambiguity type: Structural. Identification and explanation: The headline's two alternative syntactic representations make it structurally ambivalent: (1) A tree found a stolen painting. (2) A person found a stolen painting near a tree. What makes headline humorous: The headline can easily be read as the representation in (1): A tree found a painting, which is humorous because trees, being inanimate, generally don't find things. Computational Resolution: Specifying in the computational lexicon that the verb "find" usually takes an agent with the property [+animate].

Ambiguity
The presence of two or more possible meanings in any passage. Also, a fallacy in which the same term is used in more than one way. Adjective: ambiguous.

Lexical ambiguity
The presence of two or more possible meanings within a single word Examples and Observations:

"Outside of a dog, a book is a man's best friend; inside it's too hard to read." (Groucho Marx) The Rabbi married my sister. She is looking for a match. The fisherman went to the bank. "[C]ontext is highly relevant to this part of the meaning of utterances. . . . For example They passed the port at midnight

is lexically ambiguous. However, it would normally be clear in a given context which of the two homonyms, 'port' ('harbor') or 'port' ('kind of fortified wine'), is being used." --and also which sense of the polysemous verb 'pass' is intended." (John Lyons, Linguistic Semantics: An Introduction. Cambridge Univ. Press, 1995)

"The following example, taken from Johnson-Laird (1983), illustrates two important characteristics of lexical ambiguity: The plane banked just before landing, but then the pilot lost control. The strip on the field runs for only the barest of yards and the plane just twisted out of the turn before shooting into the ground. First, that this passage is not particularly difficult to understand in spite of the fact that all of its content words are ambiguous suggests that ambiguity is unlikely to invoke special resourcedemanding processing mechanisms but rather is handled as a by-product of normal comprehension. Second, there are a number of ways in which a word can be ambiguous. The word plane, for example, has several noun meanings, and it can also be used as a verb. The word twisted could be an adjective and is also morphologically ambiguous between the past tense and participial forms of the verb to twist." (Patrizia Tabossi et al., "Semantic Effects on Syntactic Ambiguity Resolution" in Attention and Performance XV, ed. by C. Umilt and M. Moscovitch. MIT Press, 1994)

The presence of two or more possible meanings within a single sentence or sequence of words. Examples and Observations:

The professor said on Monday he would give an exam. The chicken is ready to eat. Visiting relatives can be boring.