Select a passage that will allow you to demonstrate your knowledge of the different forms of ambiguity discussed below. YOU MUST BE SPECIFIC about the kind of amibiguity present in your passage. For example, word sense abmiguity, means that there are different senses (as in dictionary sense listings) or subsenses of the word that could be used to interpret the passage ("Time flies like an arrow."); structural amibiguity means that while the word sense might be the same, the structure of the passage can be interpreted differently ("I saw him on the hill with the binoculars.")
From National Geographic:
1 2 3 4 5 6 7
We entered a drift where operators, stripped to their
8
skivvies, were jackhammering holes to insert explosives. A little
9 10
way into picture taking, my arms got heavy. The deeper I breathed,
11 12
the dizzier I became. Chagrin was the last sensation I recall.
1. WE, ambiguous pronoun: means the speaker and at least one
other, but the exact meaning is often determined from the context.
The "we" of "we got married" is much different from the "we" of
"we won the war".
2. ENTERED: ambiguous word sense. Did we "enter a drift" into
a ledger of notable drifts, did we "enter a drift" in a contest
for best drifts...? Correct meaning obviously has to do with
some (physical?) motion of the speaker, but even then in what sense? Picking
from only a few of these further restricted word senses we still have,
"to go in", "to come in" (what is the point of view intended as the
picture created by the story?), "to go upon land for the purpose of
taking possesion" (are we capturing an enemy drift in some game
or battle?), perhaps even "to pass within the limits of a particular
period of time" (taking drift to mean, "an assumed trend toward
a general change in the structure of a language over a period of
time", this is certainly a viable possibility).
3. A: correct interpretation is as an article of speech, but
further interpretations could also be correct (especially in the case
where upper/lower case is ignored.) It could be part of a proper noun
as in "In the Marines I was part of A Company". Since humans are
able to do error correction it is possible that the corrected, valid
interpretation could be to take "a drift" to be "adrift" producing
a sentence that has the following meaning: "We entered, adrift..."
(entered the cove floating on the mast from our wrecked ship).
4. DRIFT: Correctly, the meaning is "a small crosscut in a mine
connecting two larger tunnels". My hypothesis is that this meaning,
the second subsense in a list of seven senses (with over twenty subsenses)
in only the first of two homograph entries in my still modest dictionary
(Webster's New Collegiate) will escape all but the most technical
of readers. However, even without knowledge of the domain I believe
that most readers would get the drift of the story, in most cases
rather accurately. Even the technical reader must take this as an
elliptical reference until perhaps encountering the word "jackhammer"
which infers miners, which would them come back to infer the
correct meaning of this word.
5. WHERE: Also can be taken as an ambiguous word sense. Do we
take this to mean the location of an event (correctly), or a more
conceptual arrival, such as in "right where we wanted to be- at the
correct conclusion". Context makes this clear.
6. OPERATORS: Once again, as is being shown to be the rule, not
the exception, there is word sense ambiguity: Everything up to this
point could be taken to mean: "We entered into the understanding of
a concept where mathematical operators...". The vocational meaning
of operator is in itself ellipitical, operators of what?
7. STRIPPED: The comma preceeding this word helps to remove
structural ambiguity. Taken as a whole the sentence is clear, but
taken from the beginning to a certain point the sentence can easily
read "We entered a drift where operators stripped to their skivvies."
Meaning, of course, "...where those of us who were operators took
off their clothes."
At this point I will leave off discussion of word sense
ambiguity, word subsense ambiguity and homograph ambiguity, concepts which
should be clear by now. One final point to be made is that most words,
taken out of context, present a great deal of ambiguity. Given the
large number of permutations involved there is almost always
a second or third correct interpretation available, certainly
within syntactic constraints, and often within the limits of semantic
credibility as well. The trick here is, perhaps, to split the
possibilities into two classes: words for which the sense is
ambiguous even in context, and those for which the sense is only
ambiguous out of context.
8. "... to insert explosives": structural ambiguity. This is
clear to the human listener, but is it easy to make the machine understand
that this clause refers to "the operators" and not "we"? It is a
very easy transition from the above to "We stealthily entered a drift,
where operators were playing cards, to set explosives." The commas
help to disambiguate the original sentence, but it is primarily the
connection that the operators are drilling holes for the PURPOSE of
making a place to insert explosives that makes the meaning clear.
9. "A little way into picture taking...": ellision, (and word sense
ambiguity). Filling in the missing words we have "Some time after the
start of this particular instance of the PROCESS of the photographing
of some unspecified subjects..."
10. "...got heavy": idiomatic metaphor, perhaps ellision. Obviously
the speaker's arms were no heavier than before. As an idiom it just
means the muscles in his arms got tired. As ellision it may be
taken as "...it felt as though my arms were getting heavier".
The second case would also hold if the sense of the word "arms" was
firearms.
11. CHAGRIN: Elliptical reference, "My own feeling of Chagrin..."
12. "last sensation I recall." Elliptical reference, "last sensation
I recall having before I passed out, as I now think back".
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Using the above example as a model, find an interesting piece of text
and analyze it for ambiguity in the same way. Number each word, or piece of
a phrase, that you wish to examine. Pick 8-10 words. Write a sentence, or short
paragraph for each so that you explain, and illustrate which type of
ambiguity is present, as discussed in class.
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SENSE and SUBSENSE --- "In what sense do you mean that?"
Words in the dictionary have numbered SENSEs and each sense may have
lettered SUBSENSEs. When it is implict, not explicit which sense or subsense
is to be inferred from the context, there is likely to be word sense
amibiguity.
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STRUCTURAL AMBIGUITY --- Which word refers to which clause?
"I saw the boy on the hill with binoculars."
What is the structure of this sentence?
1) I, with the binoculars, saw the boy on the hill.
2) The boy had the binoculars, he was on the hill, and I saw him.
3) The hill had the binoculars (on it), the boy was on that hill, and I
saw him.
4) [Believe it or not there is at least one more...]
And then of course there is the zombie version, which repeats some of the
structure above:
I, with my circular saw, am now, as I speak, sawing the boy, and we are on
the hill with the binoculars.
I, with my particularly sharp-toothed binoculars, am now, as I speak, sawing
the boy, while we are both on the hill.
We have agreed that the label for the boy who was on the hill is "the boy on
the hill," which distiguishes him from the boy who was on the house, who is
referred to as "the boy on the house." I saw him (seeing), saw him (sawing),
etc., but no one is now on the hill.
For fun: "Did you see Saw II too?" "I saw Saw II too!"
To which noun does the "with" clause belong?
Think of it this way: can reordering the clauses in the sentence, or adding
commas change the way the sentence is commonly understood? Do certain parts
of the sentence refer to other parts of the sentence? By contrast, in
the sentence:
"It was really something."
the "It" is ambiguous, but there is no ambiguity about the structure
of the sentence. You should refer to this as "referential amibiguity."
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PRONOUN REFERENCE AMIBIGUITY: What does the pronoun refer to?
"I hit the ball with the bat and it flew out of the park," --- what does
"it" refer to? (e.g., could be: I hit the ball with the bat and it flew out
of my hand, in which "it" would be referring to the bat).
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ELLIPTICAL REFERENCE -- Leaving out explicit references to something because
it is commonly understood:
"I ran into the dean's office and his jaw dropped"
Whose jaw dropped? There is no explicit reference to the dean.
It is simply that we know who is likely to be in the dean's office.
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ELLISION --- Dropping words because we do not really need them to
understand the meaning:
"My arms got heavy"
"I was feeling the same sensations I would have felt if my
arms were heavier and I still had to hold them up"
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SLANG Man, that was one really bad dude, everyone respected him.
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METAPHOR He was oil upon the water, calming everyone down.
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SIMILE His anger was like a volcano erupting.
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and above all, COMMON SENSE.
"I was ready to kill him"
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