Schlenker 2006, p. 8 states that a sentence or phrase which corresponds to two distinct syntactic tree diagrams is structurally ambiguous. Since the data
are structural ambiguities which are caused by equivocal phrasing or amphibology, to answer the second problem of the research, the writer first drew
two tree diagrams of each ambiguity to explain why the phrase was considered ambiguous. Therefore, in order to know whether the phrases found were
structurally ambiguous or not the writer had to check the phrases using the simple syntactic tree diagram or flat structure by O’Grady, Dobrovolsky and Katamba
1997, p. 185. The writer did not use the X-bar theory since the writer is not very familiar with the theory. Moreover, the purpose of drawing syntactic tree in this
study is only to see the ambiguity aspect found in the phrases. So, it does not really matter to use the flat structure instead of the X-bar theory.
Using a computer program called Syntax Tree Editor; the writer generated each tree diagram from each meaning derived from the ambiguous phrase. Among
the other similar programs, Syntax Tree Editor is the easy-operating-program to draw the tree diagram, even though there will be a repetition of drawing the same
syntactic category symbol, so, in the end, the writer had to edit the tree diagram manually.
As an example, the phrase ‘old men and women’ is structurally ambiguous because there are two different meanings derived from two different tree diagrams
from this phrase. The figure 3.1 and 3.2 below shows whether this sentence is structurally ambiguous or not.
3.1 Research Procedure
Since the writer had account in Live Journal, the writer had already had free access to the fan-fictions posted by the authors which sometimes were
restricted to Live Journal user only. The writer first chose the sample or six targeted fan-fictions authors who live in Indonesia and do not study English as
their major in their college or specifically in a certain English language institution. After choosing the sample, the writer chose the fan-fictions whether those
are one-shot or multi-chaptered one later to be analyzed. The writer then read the fan-fictions and listed the structural ambiguities occurring in the fan-fictions on
the table notes. Having the data listed, as the next step, the writer drew two tree diagrams of each data found and explained how the phrases were structurally
ambiguous by interpreting the meanings that were drawn from the tree diagrams. As the last step of this research procedure, the writer later gave some ways of how
English learners can resolve the ambiguities.
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CHAPTER IV RESEARCH RESULTS AND DISCUSSION
In this chapter the writer presents the research results and discussion, which are not labelled explicitly in this thesis. There are three sections of this chapter. The
first section of this chapter presents the data collected from the content analysis, answering the first problem in the problem formulation. The second section of this
chapter deals with describing the data using syntactic trees and answering the second problem of this research. The third section will be the outline of the
suggested resolutions.
4.1 Structural Ambiguity Occurrence in Indonesian Authors’ Fan-fictions
The data in this study was obtained by reading the Indonesian authors’ fan-fiction products posted in Live Journal. A total of 27 the GazettE fan-fictions
from six Indonesian authors were selected in this study. As it is explained in Chapter 3, the writer read all the fan-fictions and listed the structural ambiguities
which appeared in the fan-fictions using some related theories as a guidance to decide whether the sentences contained structural ambiguity or not.
As a result, the writer found 17 of 27 fan-fictions containing structural ambiguities. Some of them had more than one ambiguity occurring in the body of
one the fan-fiction. From the 17 fan-fictions, the writer found a total of 20 structurally ambiguous phrases.
