AMBIGUITY: SYNTACTIC

Syntactic ambiguity falls into two types:

local ambiguity where the word class or syntactic function of a word is unclear at the moment the word occurs, but is made clear by subsequent context. Examples (slash indicates point of ambiguity):

 The horse raced past the barn / fell.

 John remembered the answer / was in the book.

standing ambiguity where a sentence remains ambiguous even after it is complete. In (e.g.) Bond saw the spy with the telescope, the telescope might be carried by either Bond or the spy, and the ambiguity can only be resolved by the wider context.

Local ambiguity provides insights into syntactic parsing because it enables the researcher to investigate how a subject reacts both at the point where the ambiguity occurs and at the point where disambiguation occurs. The reactions of a reader can be monitored by tracking eye movements or by presenting sentences word by word and noting when a processing difficulty causes a delay in moving on to the next word.

 In principle, the language user could react to ambiguity in several ways:

 a. Adopt a single analysis, even at the risk of later having to abandon it (a ‘garden path’ view).

 b. Hold alternative analyses in parallel, but provisionally make use of the one that best fits the context and add it to the meaning representation.

 c. Hold alternative analyses in parallel, where they compete with each other until one becomes so highly activated on the basis of new evidence that it is accepted (a constraint-based approach).

 d. Delay commitment until the ambiguity is resolved.

 Evidence suggests that one preferred interpretation is chosen and revised later if necessary. Eye-movement experiments show that readers experience processing difficulty not so much at the point where an ambiguity arises, but at the point where disambiguation occurs. This might appear to support a ‘single analysis’ view, but might equally reflect processes b or c.

An important issue is how the preferred interpretation is chosen. Early discussion focused on syntactic considerations. It was suggested that the listener/reader exercised a preference for a canonical (Subject–Verb–Object) sentence structure: hence an initial assumption that The horse raced... consists of Subject þ main verb. A more sophisticated theory proposed two strategies that are specifically syntactic:

Minimal attachment. Build the simplest structure consistent with the rules of the grammar.

Late closure. Where there is a problem of attachment ambiguity make an attachment to the clause that is currently being processed; ideally, assume that the current clause is the main one.

 Later lexicalist accounts introduced a semantic element, suggesting that the preferred reading is based upon the argument structure of the current verb. For example, the pattern associated with DONATE involves a donator and a recipient. The preferred interpretation of the man donated would thus be: Agent + Past Simple verb. But animacy also plays a part. A cheque cannot BE AN agent, so the preferred interpretation of the cheque donated would be: object donated + past participle.

 A third explanation is entirely semantic. The preferred continuation of: The lawyer examined... would be the witness rather than by the judge, simply because world knowledge tells us that lawyers tend to examine rather than be examined.

 There is thus some disagreement as to whether we attempt to resolve ambiguity using purely syntactic criteria, or whether lexico syntactic or semantic criteria play a part.

 A criticism of some of the ambiguity data is that it is not based upon a natural parsing situation. ‘Garden path’ sentences are often presented to subjects without any preceding context. It is therefore not clear at what point context might normally have enabled the reader to resolve the kind of ambiguity that has been studied. For example, the preferred interpretation of The horse raced past the barn... might be influenced by a preceding sentence which ran: There were two horses. A referential theory argues that contextual information will often ensure disambiguation.

 ‘Garden path’ ambiguity is more easily exemplified in written texts than in spoken– though, it is sometimes dependent upon the omission of normal punctuation. In speech, prosody provides important cues (intonation, pausing, shifts in pitch level, variations in articulation rate), which often serve to resolve attachment ambiguity by indicating where clauses begin and end.

See also: Ambiguity: lexical, Garden path sentences, Prosody, Syntactic parsing

Further reading: Aitchison (1998); Mitchell (1994)

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