Примењена лингвистика у част Ранку Бугарском - Језик у

Stathis Efstathiadis
SYNTACTIC AMBIGUITY REVISITED 1
UDK 811.111`367
Abstract. Linguistic investigation seeks primarily to achieve explanatory, in addition
to descriptive, adequacy, thus making possible the construction of highly
valued types of grammar.
The aim of the present paper is to suggest ways of providing a simple explication
of certain linguistic phenomena like ambiguity, which become of major
interest to the extent that they can be shown to make a significant contribution to
the establishment of such adequacy.
Specifically, concern in this paper is mainly with indicating (a) the necessity
of having descriptions of a multi-layer rather than of a linear nature, and (b)
the systematicity that phenomena like ambiguity may exhibit, thus justifying the
centrality of their role in linguistic research.
Keywords: adequacy, deep/surface structure, underlying representations, ambiguity,
phonological, lexical, polysemy, homonymy, syntactic, systematicity.
1. Introductory
In natural languages, ambiguity or multiplicity of analysis and interpretation is
commonly viewed as a by-product of those general linguistic processes which
convert abstract, underlying structures into superficial phonetic realisations.
To the extent that quite different deep structures can be represented by a
single phonetic form, which has a number of distinct meanings, 2 and despite the
fact that it is not particularly frequent, the phenomenon becomes both interesting
and linguistically significant, as it then becomes a central notion (along with
the notions of grammaticality, synonymy, and anomaly or deviance; cf. Derwing
1974: 16l) in the evaluation of grammars, as this term has been conceived by
generativists. It is precisely this centrality and systematicity of the phenomenon
that this paper purports to establish within the framework of linguistic enquiry.
Ambiguity may be manifested and separately considered at the levels of
phonology, lexis, and syntax. Mainly for reasons of obvious shortage of space,
the treatment in this paper will be focused chiefly on syntactic ambiguity; ex-
1 This paper is a drastically revised and enriched version of Efstathiadis (1978). Exemplification
will be generally derived from English, with the exception of one or two pertinent instances taken
from Greek.
2 The number of distinct meanings equals the number of distinct underlying structures.
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