AMBIGUITY
DONE BY SAMAR NAIF HINDI
SUBMITTED TO WALEED AMER
AMBIGUITY
• The presence of two or more possible meanings in a single
passage.
• the possibility of interpreting an expression in two or more
distinct ways.
SYNTACTIC AMBIGUITY
• Syntactic ambiguity arises when a complex phrase or a
sentence can be parsed in more than one way.
• Is called the grammatical ambiguity
1- I know whom John knows.
(Either I am acquainted with the same people as John is, or I know
who John's acquaintances are.)
2- They are hunting dogs.
(Either "they" are hunting for dogs, or those dogs are a type known
as "hunting dogs".)
3- I'm going to sleep.
("Going" can be a verb with destination "sleep" or an auxiliary
indicating near future. So it can mean "I am (now) falling asleep" or
"I am (in the future) intending to sleep".)
SEMANTIC AMBIGUITY
• Semantic ambiguity arises when a word or concept has an
inherently diffuse meaning based on widespread or informal
usage. This is often the case, for example, with idiomatic
expressions whose definitions are rarely or never well-defined,
and are presented in the context of a larger argument that invites
a conclusion.
1- Iraqi head seeks arms
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.
2- Teacher strikes idle kids
"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.
PHONOLOGICAL AMBIGUITY
• Spoken language can contain many more types of ambiguities, where there is
more than one way to compose a set of sounds into words, for example “ice
cream” and “I scream.” Such ambiguity is generally resolved according to the
context. A mishearing of such, based on incorrectly resolved ambiguity, is
called a mondegreen.
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CULTURAL AMBIGUITY
• Cultural ambiguity refers to the influence of different cultures. A
user is cultural ambiguous if he or she has been influenced by
different cultural groups and/or carries a cultural identity that
cannot be clearly assigned to a certain territory.