Примењена лингвистика у част Ранку Бугарском - Језик у

Stathis Efstathiadis: SYNTACTIC AMBIGUITY REVISITED
tion. Under certain conditions 10 pronominal elements will have ambiguous reference
in a sentence, as in
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(10) Jane asked her friend if she could stay the night with her.
where we have no ‘structural’ way (not even phonological) of deciding which NP
she and the second occurrence of her refer to: Jane or her friend, i.e. whether the
sentence is to be interpreted as in paraphrase (14a.i) or as in (14a.i):
(10a) (i) Jane asked her friend: can I stay the night with you?
(ii) Jane asked her friend: can you stay the night with me?
An equally interesting (though somewhat different) case of ambiguity
caused by pronominalisation, in particular by collocational constraints, is illustrated
by
(11) S/he fed her dog meat.
where her and dog have double distributional classification: her may express
possession or may function as an indirect object to fed; and dog may be a noun
(‘her dog’) or a noun modifier (‘dog meat’); additionally, her may refer to she or
to another lady (multiple ambiguity). Notice that the sentence remains ambiguous
even if She is replaced by He. A number of different ways of disambiguating this
sentence - occasionally changing the meaning - suggest themselves:
S/he fed his dog meat - S/he fed him meat – Her dog was fed meat, etc.
4.1.2. In the answer below to the question “Tηλεφώνησες στη θεία σου;” (Have
you phoned your aunt?)
(12) Mόλις έφτασα.
μόλιs is understood in two different ways, ‘as soon as’ and ‘just’, and so (12) is
interpreted accordingly as either (12a.i) or (12a.ii)
(12a) (i) As soon as I arrived. (the implication being ‘Yes, I did’)
(ii) I have just arrived. (implication: ‘No, I didn’t have time’)
4.2 Constructional ambiguity is a by-product of the way in which ‘words’ appear
to be strung together on the surface, i.e. it is (in part) a matter of the more general
phenomenon of collocationa(bi)lity.
For instance, the English construction Adj.+Noun+Noun is potentially ambiguous.
Thus,
10 Notably, when there is agreement as to Person, Number, and Gender between a Pronoun and a
Noun or Noun-Phrase inside the same sentential or phrasal context.