Introduction to Linguistics - Assignment 7
James Madison University
Try to find a naturally-occurring example, written or spoken, of a structurally ambiguous
sentence. (These come up all the time, even in The Breeze . :) ) Attempt to make up your own example only if you really find yourself unable to find a naturally-occurring one. Now answer the following questions about your sentence:
What are the multiple possible interpretations of your sentence?
What syntactic constituent in your sentence has more than one alternative for what other part of the sentence it could combine with grammatically? (ie., what syntactic constituent is the source of the ambiguity)? You don't necessarily have to identify the types of the constituents; you can just give the word groupings.
Was it possible, in context, for you to choose one meaning over the other(s) for this sentence? If so, why?
In the discussion of truth-conditional semantics at the start of Chapter 4, what word is introduced to describe sentences like "When everything is said or done, there's nothing left to say or do."
Do Exercise 2 (but just examples a through k) at the back of Chapter 4.
For Exercise 5 at the back of Chapter 4, do just examples a, b, h, and i, of Part One and examples a, b, and j of Part Two.
