Roadside Linguistics - Sign Syntax

Michigan's warning signs regarding ice on bridges are pretty straightforward syntactically; in fact, I can't think of any other way to parse the sentence than the following - 

On the other hand, some signs from other states (like the one below) can be parsed differently depending upon which part of speech the word before is playing.

Logically, I would say that the sign is intended to be interpreted with before acting as a subordinating conjunction for a temporal, adverbial clause, as follows -

However, the option is open for before to be interpreted as a preposition telling where the bridge ices.

And this is why I don't sleep at night.

Sign image credits.

Illustrating the Oxford Comma a.k.a. the Serial Comma and the Harvard Comma

Each of the following illustrations has been making the rounds lately. For your viewing pleasure, here they are in one place.

As best I can tell, credits for the Ayn Rand and God illustration are here and credits for the JFK and Stalin illustration are here.

Syntax with Sherlock - Sentence Ambiguity Illustrated and Diagrammed

*For simplicity's sake, because the phrase "using binoculars" functions like a prepositional phrase, I have taken the liberty of changing "using" to "with" for the diagrams.

Here is a syntactic diagram of the version of the sentence pictured on the left.

Here is a syntactic diagram of the version of the sentence pictured on the right.




The above syntactic trees show that the ambiguous nature of the sentence results from the possibility of the prepositional phrase attaching to the noun phrase or directly to the verb phrase.

Click here for more sentence ambiguity diagrams.

Sherlock image from - http://bb.ustc.edu.cn/

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.

Mmm Mmm Ambiguous Advertising (includes vagueness and a spelling error )

This is a screen shot from the website of one of my family's favorite pizza places.

Is the advertised special a [[large family] [deal]] ?

Or a [[large][family deal]] ?
If the advertised special is for a [[large family] [deal]] as the ad layout suggests, is it for a family that is large in number or a family whose members are large in size?

I'm pretty sure the advertisers meant the advertised special to be interpreted as a [[large][family deal]] because the special includes a large pizza and a large salad, but the word choice and the way the words are arranged on the two different lines make the deal both ambiguous and vague at the same time.

Also, no matter how "mmm, mmm good" their pizza is, I still don't like the extra "m" in the box about on-line ordering.

Nose Ring Ambiguity Diagrammed

What better way to have fun with an intentionally ambiguous cartoon than to diagram the ambiguous sentence in the cartoon!

Gotta love the humor that ambiguity provides.

Where Was the Girl? - Sentence Ambiguity Diagrammed

Harry ordered a drink for the girl at the bar.

The girl at the bar is the one Harry ordered the drink for.

Harry ordered a drink, at the bar, for the girl (the girl sitting at a table? the girl in the bathroom? the girl across the street?).

Syntax really can be fun.

Linguistics Cartoon Favorites - Syntactic Ambiguity

Would That Be an Example of Ambiguity or Vagueness?

The answer is both when talking about the word "triangle."
The word "triangle" is ambiguous when it is unclear on whether it is denoting the shape, the musical instrument or the drafting tool. The word "triangle" is vague when it is referencing the shape because it is indefinite about whether it denotes a scalene, isosceles, obtuse, right, acute or equilateral triangle.

Ambiguous words have more than one meaning, for example: the word "light" meaning "not heavy" and the word "light" meaning "not dark."

Vague words have more than one sense of the same meaning, for example: the word "child" is defined as "a young person" and that young person could be either male or female.

A test to help determine a word's ambiguity status is whether or not the word has two unrelated antonyms, for example: the word "hard" is ambiguous because it has the antonyms "soft" and "easy."

Crossword Puzzle Clues and Semantics

I have always been a huge fan of crossword puzzles and, in a round-about way, my love of crossword puzzles was partly responsible for my decision to study linguistics in graduate school. So naturally, I tend to semantically analyze crossword puzzle clues while working a puzzle. As a result, I believe that the relationship between crossword puzzles and semantics should be seen as reciprocal because working a puzzle not only calls on semantic knowledge, it also reinforces and adds to a person's semantic knowledge, whether consciously or not.

The role semantic knowledge plays in solving a crossword should become clear by looking at some of the common crossword puzzle clue categories and the semantic concepts with which they can be compared.

Traditional dictionary definitions = reference
Thesaurus = synonymy
Encyclopedic = reference
Names = reference
Opposites = antonymy
Puns and wordplay = vagueness and ambiguity, polysemy
“A kind of” = hyponymy
Indirect = vagueness and ambiguity