Примењена лингвистика у част Ранку Бугарском - Језик у

JEZIK U UPOTREBI / LANGUAGE IN USE
the chimney], a prepositional phrase transformationally derived from ‘downards
in the direction of the chimney.’
5.3. In the sentence
(34) The prisoners wanted more beautiful girls.
more can be bracketed with ‘beautiful’, in which case it functions as a comparative
marker, or it can be strung together with ‘girls’, in which case it serves as a
quantifier; in either case there will be both different distributional classification
and different constituent structure.
5.4. To come back to sentence (17) re-cited here as (35):
(35) Hiding criminals will offend the law.
In addition to the multiple ambiguity caused by the three interpretations of the
transformationally derived nominal ‘hiding criminals’, there is also the lexical
ambiguity of the amphisemous item ‘to hide’ meaning (i) to conceal, and (ii) to
strike / beat with a hide (animal skin). Note that in the case under consideration
the syntactic ambiguity will be resolved after infinitivisation but not after passivisation
– as it is in numerous other cases; 15 Thus, in the sentences below
(35a) (i) To hide criminals will offend the law.
(ii) The law will be offended by hiding criminals.
(35a.i) is syntactically unambiguous whereas (35a.ii) is not.
5.5. Finally, the sentence
(36) The lady kissed the young boy with passion.
is intended to demonstrate how ambiguity of the constructional and/or of the
transformational type can co-exist in a string; specifically, the interpretations that
follow illustrate the distinct ways in which the prepositional phrase with passion
may be (i) transformationally derived (from ‘the lady had passion’), (ii) it may
be bracketed together with ‘kissed’ as its complement (‘kissed with passion’), or
(iii) it may serve as an Adverbial of Manner attached to the entire Verb-Phrase
(‘kissed the young boy – with passion’).
15 Where applicable, the passive transformation is a good way of disambiguating sentences and
sentence-parts, as is shown in the example below:
(i) They can fish.
(ii) Fish is canned (by them).
However, as we have just seen, certain ambiguities survive passivisation.
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