Thursday January 3, 2008
Really ambiguous sentences
THANKS to Stephen Kau for his article that touched on ambiguity (Dec 14). It was really interesting.
However, I don’t think some of the examples given are exactly ambiguous sentences since the context clearly indicates the intended meaning.
“The man knocked on the front door and housekeeper Sarah Lim came down the stairs in a nightgown and opened it to let the visitor in” is not ambiguous since the context (“door” and “let the visitor in”) has been established.
Based on the sentence, only “door” can be opened and only through “door” can we let someone in.
And by the way, is the word “open” an appropriate word to be used with “a nightgown” to mean “to undress”, as implied by Stephen?
Hence, the above sentence is more of a “run-on sentence” than an ambiguous one. The sentence can be chunked into two:
“The man knocked on the front door and housekeeper Sarah Lim came down the stairs in a nightgown. She opened it to let the visitor in.”
“Mano met a woman with a wooden leg named Aminah” is also fine and clear, at least for us in Malaysia. Aminah is clearly a name of a woman and I don’t think there are artificial legs called Aminah yet, except perhaps in Australia.
The following are really ambiguous sentences:
1. The lady hit the man with an umbrella. (Is the lady using an umbrella to hit or is she hitting a man who is carrying an umbrella?)
2. He gave her cat food. (Is he giving cat food to her or is he giving her cat some food?)
3. They are looking for teachers of French, German and Japanese. (Are they looking for teachers who can each teach one language or all three languages?)
In all the instances above, the context does not clearly indicate the intended meaning.
– Mahid Masseluang, Labuan
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