ambiguity (n.)

The general sense of this term, referring to a WORD or SENTENCE which expresses more than one MEANING (is ambiguous), is found in LINGUISTICS, but several types of ambiguity are recognized. The most widely discussed type is grammatical (or structural) ambiguity. In PHRASE-STRUCTURE ambiguity, alternative CONSTITUENT STRUCTURES can be assigned to a CONSTRUCTION, as in new houses and shops, which could be analyzed either as new [houses and shops] (i.e. both are new) or [new houses] and shops (i.e. only the houses are new). In TRANSFORMATIONAL ambiguity, the sentence may have a similar BRACKETING on the SURFACE for both readings, but is related to more than one structure at a more abstract LEVEL of REPRESENTATION. For example, Visiting speakers can be awful is relatable to either It is awful to visit speakers or Speakers who visit are awful. A sentence with more than two structural interpretations is said to be multiply ambiguous. An analysis which demonstrates the ambiguity in a sentence is said to DISAMBIGUATE the sentence. Ambiguity which does not arise from the grammatical analysis of a sentence, but is due solely to the alternative meanings of an individual LEXICAL ITEM, is referred to as lexical ambiguity, e.g. I found the table fascinating (= ‘object of furniture’ or ‘table of figures’). How the brain resolves ambiguities is an important goal of PSYCHOLINGUISTIC research.

One of the issues in semantic discussion has been to circumscribe the notion of ambiguity so that it is not used in too broad a way. The term needs to be distinguished, in particular, from ‘generality’ of meaning. The word parent, for example, has one reading synonymous with mother and a second reading synonymous with father, but this is not a case of ambiguity because parent has a single, more general meaning which subsumes the two possibilities. Ambiguity also needs to be distinguished from the kind of INDETERMINACY which surrounds any sentence: in Mary saw a balloon, it is not clear when she saw it, how big the balloon was, what its color was, and so on. No sentence would be called ambiguous on account of such unstated issues. Generality and indeterminacy of meaning are sometimes referred to as vagueness. However, many semanticists prefer to reserve this term for EXPRESSIONS whose meaning involves reference to a category whose boundaries are FUZZY.