Monday, May 3, 2010

Who Had the Fork? - Sentence Ambiguity Diagrammed

The cat ate the mouse with a fork.

IS IT...
The cat used a fork to eat the mouse. (The cat had the fork)

OR IS IT...
The cat ate the mouse that had a fork in its possesion. (The mouse had the fork)






Click here for more sentence ambiguity diagrams.


2 comments:

James Davis said...

Viewed from a slightly different angle (semantics), the ambiguity here has to do with whether "with the fork" is an instrument or a descriptor of the mouse, making it hinge on the ambiguity of the word 'with'.

The English preposition system seems to have quite a few words that are doing such double-duty.

Laura Payne said...

Nicely stated James. This is also why the semantic ambiguity can be illustrated syntactically. The fork is an instrument when the PP attaches to the VP and it is a descriptor of the mouse when the PP attaches to the NP.

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