Примењена лингвистика у част Ранку Бугарском - Језик у

Stathis Efstathiadis: SYNTACTIC AMBIGUITY REVISITED
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(18) (i) Criminals hide (themselves) and this fact will offend the law. or
(ii) People hide criminals and this fact will offend the law. or
(iii) Criminals hide others (e.g. other criminals) and this fact will
offend the law. 11
4.3.2 Other related nominal transforms may be systematically ambiguous, as in
(19) Avoid infection by killing germs.
People like eating apples.
where the difference in the ambiguities involved in the sentences demonstrated
above is explained by the differently marked items “kill” (used both transitively
and intransitively) and “eat” (used only transitively).
The notion of transitivity is also apparent in the Greek sentence
(20) Ο Γιάννης βάφει τα παπούτσια του κάθε μέρα.
interpreted as either
(20a) (i) “John polishes his shoes every day” or
(ii) “John gets his shoes polished every day”
depending on whether βάφει is seen transitively or causatively.
4.3.3. Notice also the systematic ambiguity exhibited by the superficial structure
the+V-ing+of+NP (gerundivised V-ing):
(21) The shooting of the colonels pleased the people.
which is paraphrasable as either
(21a) (i) Someone shot the colonels and this pleased the people. or
(ii) The colonels shot someone and this pleased the people.
4.3.4. It should be noted at this point that gerundivisation of a verb is not the only
nominalised element that may cause systematic ambiguity; This can be seen in:
(22) (a) The foreman’s suspension was a great surprise at the factory.
(b) The secretary is the person to consult.
Disambiguating sentences containing the string V-ing+N can be done in any of
the ways discussed in previous sections.
4.3.5. Relativisation + Deletion
When relativised clauses undergo a deletion transformation, whereby they are
reduced to (relative) prepositional phrases, the result is systematic ambiguity,
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This is in addition to the lexical ambiguity brought about by the homonymous item “hide” meaning
to “conceal” and to “beat”.