ambiguity

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Ambiguity

ambiguity example images

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Ambiguity is A word, phrase, or sentence is ambiguous if it has more than one meaning. (Kent Bach, Routledge Encyclopedia of Philosophy entry on Ambiguity)

In semantic ambiguity is sentence word why ambiguity is sentence word you can see my example :

"I haven't slept for ten days,"

semantic ambiguity rests on the interpretation of individual words; in this case, "for." In this statement, "for" can mean—loosely—either "for a duration of" or "in the last."

Consider some other examples:

"Our mothers bore us."

"There was not a single man at the party."

"Children make nutritious snacks."

In these examples, the words "bore," "single," and "make" are ambiguous. In the first example, we could either be asserting how tiresome our mothers are or merely acknowledging that it was they who did bear us in their womb at one point. In the second, we could either be referring to a lack of bachelors at the party or a lack of men altogether. In the last, we could be either commending children for their nutritious-snack-making skills or—more gravely—modestly proposing their nutritional value.

What's more, words' meanings can change over time. Consider, in light of the dawn of Facebook, this statement:

"I liked your picture."

In a simpler time, this would be rather straightforward, but the internet has deftly redefined "like" in recent years, bestowing upon it a second meaning. A meaning such that one could actually "like" a picture that one hates with every fiber of his or her being. Just by clicking "like." Such is the evolution of language.

TYPES OF AMBIGUITY

       

      Ambiguity consist of  two types of ambiguity: lexical and syntactic or structural. Lets see for my explain:

There are two types of ambiguity, lexical and structural. Lexical ambiguity is by far the more common. Everyday examples include nouns like 'chip', 'pen' and 'suit', verbs like 'call', 'draw' and 'run', and adjectives like 'deep', 'dry' and 'hard'. There are various tests for ambiguity. One test is having two unrelated antonyms, as with 'hard', which has both 'soft' and 'easy' as opposites. Another is the conjunction reduction test. Consider the sentence, 'The tailor pressed one suit in his shop and one in the municipal court'. Evidence that the word 'suit' (not to mention 'press') is ambiguous is provided by the anomaly of the 'crossed interpretation' of the sentence, on which 'suit' is used to refer to an article of clothing and 'one' to a legal action.

The above examples of ambiguity are each a case of one word with more than one meaning. However, it is not always clear when we have only one word. The verb 'desert' and the noun 'dessert', which sound the same but are spelled differently, count as distinct words (they are homonyms). So do the noun 'bear' and the verb 'bear', even though they not only sound the same but are spelled the same. These examples may be clear cases of homonymy, but what about the noun 'respect' and the verb 'respect' or the preposition 'over' and the adjective 'over'? Are the members of these pairs homonyms or different forms of the same word? There is no general consensus on how to draw the line between cases of one ambiguous word and cases of two homonyous words. Perhaps the difference is ultimately arbitrary.

For example, the cognitive sense of Lexical semantics has the task of identifying and characterizing such systematic phemena. It is also concerned to explain the rich and subtle semantic behavior of common and highly flexible words like the verbs 'do' and 'put' and the prepositions 'at', 'in' and 'to'. Each of these words has uses which are so numerous yet so closely related that they are often described as 'polysemous' rather than ambiguous.

Structural ambiguity occurs when a phrase or sentence has more than one underlying structure, such as the phrases 'Tibetan history teacher', 'a student of high moral principles' and 'short men and women', and the sentences 'The girl hit the boy with a book' and 'Visiting relatives can be boring'. These ambiguities are said to be structural because each such phrase can be represented in two structurally different ways, e.g., '[Tibetan history] teacher' and 'Tibetan [history teacher]'. Indeed, the existence of such ambiguities provides strong evidence for a level of underlying syntactic structure (see SYNTAX). Consider the structurally ambiguous sentence, 'The chicken is ready to eat', which could be used to describe either a hungry chicken or a broiled chicken. It is arguable that the operative reading depends on whether or not the implicit subject of the infinitive clause 'to eat' is tied anaphorically to the subject ('the chicken') of the main clause.

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references :  http://www.askgrammaticus.com/barbaric/semantic.php

                    http://online.sfsu.edu/kbach/ambguity.html

                    http://www.diplomacy.edu/language/ambiguity