22 child?, there are no conceivable situations which she could answer either Yes or
No.
3 Independent Sense Relation
When two readings have the independent sets of sense relation, it can be said that those two readings are distinct. For example, the two readings of light
have their own opposites, dark and heavy. Moreover, those two opposites do not have relation in meaning.
4 Autonomy
The last indicator of discreteness is autonomy. Autonomy is the use of the word in one of the senses when the other is explicitly denied by the reason of
anomaly of some such. The word dog can refer to both senses canine species and male canine species. When a person says I prefer dogs to bitches, the sentence is
acceptable and fully normal. However, when a person says I prefer children to girls, the sex specific interpretation of child is not autonomous.
b. Types of Ambiguity
Experts divides ambiguity in several types. However, they have their own opinion about it. Akmajian et.al 2001 only mention two kinds of ambiguity.
They are lexical and structural ambiguity. On the other hand, Grenat and Taher 2008 argue that there are four types of ambiguity. Those are lexical, structural,
scope, and referential ambiguity.
1 Lexical Ambiguity
Akmajian et.al 2001 state that lexical ambiguity is referred to a word which has more than one meaning p. 237. When a sentence is considered
23 lexically ambiguous, the sentence contains either homonyms or polysemes. Some
researchers point out that only homonyms causes ambiguity. On the other hand, some others argue that both polysemes and homonyms will cause ambiguity
Teodorescu, 2012, p. 3. Akmajian et.al 2001 mention that polysemy causes ambiguity for it has more than one related meaning p. 237. The polysemous
words, which have more than one meaning, will cause more than one interpretation. The example of polysemy is the word position:
xiv. Her sleep position might be the cause of her backache.
xv. She has to take her position on that case.
In the example xiv and xv, the word position does exist. However, they have their own meaning. The first position meaning is a way which someone is placed or
arrange: a posture. On the other hand, the second meaning is a view or opinion. Although they have different meaning, they are placed under the same entries in
the dictionary. Moreover, they have connection between the senses. Besides polysemy, homonym can also trigger ambiguity. Homonym is
divined as two or more different words which have the same phonological or spelling properties Cruse, 2000, p. 109. To be precise, Akmajian et.al 2001
also describe homophonous. Homophonous are words that have the same pronunciation but different spelling p. 239. Mary, merry, and marry are the
example of homophonous words. The often-cited word bank is an example of homonym. The word bank can represent two entities. The first one is a part of
riverside, and the second one is a place to save money. In order to differentiate the polysemy and homonymy, can be seen by looking it up in the dictionary.
24 Polysemy is known having single lexeme, while homonymy has two different
lexeme. When a word has polysemy meanings, it is usually grouped together under one dictionary entry. On the other hand, homonyms will have different
entries. In the example, the word position, which is polysemous, has only one entry in the dictionary. On the other hand, the word bank is given two main
entries, bank
1
and bank
2
. The example of lexical ambiguity can be found in the example xvi and xvii:
xvi. She couldn’t bear children.
The word bear is homonymy; it has more than one meaning. In Oxford Advanced Learners Dictionary, it has 7 verb meanings and 2 noun meanings. However, in
the context, there are only 2 meanings which are the most suitable meaning which can be interpreted from the sentence. The first one is to give birth and the second
is to put up with. Therefore, the sentence is either about a woman who is not able to give birth to children or a woman who is not able to put up with children.
xvii. He went to the bank yesterday.
As stated previously, the word bank is homonymous. In the dictionary, it has different entries with different meaning. Considering the sentence, the meaning of
the word bank is either a part of riverside or a place to save money.
2 Structural Ambiguity
Structural ambiguity is closely related to syntax. Syntax is “the way words are arranged together” Jurafsky and Martin, 2008, p. 385. Talking about
structural ambiguity will always lead the discussion into syntax because as it has been stated in advance, structural ambiguity refers to ambiguity caused by word
25 order and syntax is the study of the word order. Hurford and Heasley 1983 states
“structural ambiguity happens because its words relate to each other, even though none of the individual words are ambiguous.” p. 128. In brief, it can be said that
word order and word combination are the cause of the structural ambiguity. The examples of the structural ambiguity are the sentences below:
xviii. Josh saw the man with the telescope.
The sentence is ambiguous. It can be said so because the sentence has more than one meaning. The first meaning is Josh saw a person the man using a
telescope as his tool, he might be looking at the man from a distance and needed telescope to see the man clearly, while the second meaning is Josh saw the man
who was bringing a telescope. From this example we can see that the problem caused because of the relation of words which construct the noun phrase the man
with telescope. xix.
Jenny likes the book on the table that she bought yesterday. The sentence looks fine. However, with deeper analysis, it will bring
confusion to the reader. This example also has the same problem with noun phrase. The modifier that she bought yesterday makes the sentence become
ambiguous. The clause that she bought yesterday can be attached to both nouns book and table. So, if we see the meaning of the first interpretation is Jenny likes
the book that she bought yesterday, and the book is now on the table. The second interpretation is Jenny likes the book which is now on the new table that she
bought yesterday. xx.
The mother of the boy and the girl will arrive soon.
26 As it is seen, the sentence is ambiguous because there is more than one
meaning which can be assigned to it. The ambiguity is related to the order of the words in the subject. The noun phrase the mother of the boy and the girl can refers
to the boy’s and the girl’s mother. On the other hand, the noun phrase the mother of the boy and the girl can indicate two or plural subject. For better understanding,
please take a look at the example: xxi.
The mother of the boy and the girl is a happy. xxii.
The mother of the boy and the girl are happy. Comparing to the two examples xvi and xvii, the ambiguous sentence presented in
xvi can be understood easily. In xvi and xvii, the subject the mother of the boy and the girl can be easily differentiated, since we can easily refer to the verb is or are.
However, in xv, when modal will is used, the grouping of the words the mother of the boy and the girl becomes ambiguous.
Mihalicek and Wilson 2011 discuss three types of structural ambiguity in sentence processing. They are temporary ambiguity, the garden path effect and
global ambiguity.
a Temporary Ambiguity
The word recognition process start after people hear the first word and so does the syntactic structure building process Mihalicek Wilson, 2011, p. 387.
The example of the temporary ambiguity can be seen in xxiii: xxiii.
The rich woman went away. As soon as we saw or hear the word the which is a determiner, people
directly expect noun. But as soon as the word rich, people would encounter the
27 ambiguity since the word rich has two meaning. Moreover, the compound noun
the rich has its own meaning as a noun, while the word rich could also be noun. Therefore, people would expect two possibilities whether the word rich will be
followed with noun or verb. The ambiguity is resolved when people hear the word woman. It means that the word rich acts as an adjective. Therefore, it can be
concluded that the sentence The rich woman went away is ambiguous temporarily; until people hear the word woman.
b Garden Path Effect
In sentence processing, when people are facing temporary ambiguity sentences, they at the beginning get a meaning that was not intended by the
speaker. Those kind of mistakes in syntactic parsing are known as garden path effect. It is called garden path because the syntax of the sentence makes the reader
or listener “down the garden path” p. 388. The example is given in xxiv: xxiv.
While Mary was mending the sock fell off her lap. When people read the sock in xxiv, people would consider it as the direct
object of the verb mending. However, after finding out the word fell, people would need to reanalyze the sentence again. Then people would conclude that the
sock is not the direct object of the verb mending, but the subject of the sentence the sock fell off her lap.
c Global Ambiguity
Some structural ambiguous sentences are not temporary, they are not resolved at the end of the utterance. In that case, the sentences are globally
ambiguous. Without the additional information about the situation, intonation, and
28 preceding or following sentences, it is impossible to understand the intended
meaning of the speaker or the writer. The examples of global ambiguity are provided in xviii, xix, and xx.
3 Scope Ambiguity
When there are two or more constituent in a sentence, and one of them is determined by the others, it can be said that the constituent is in the scope of the
others that affect its reference Grenat Taher, 2008, p. 10. Poesio 1995 mentions scope ambiguity as scopal ambiguity. He explains that scopal ambiguity
happens when a sentence has more than one meaning because of the relation between operators. Radford, Atkinson, Britain, Clahsen, and Spencer 1999 also
mention scope ambiguity in their work. The example of scope ambiguity can be seen in example xxv:
xxv. Some students voted for every candidate.
The sentence in the example xxv has two interpretations. The first one is there is some particular student that voted for all candidate, while the second is for each
candidate, it is possible to find a student who voted for that candidate.
4 Referential Ambiguity
This kind of ambiguity arise because of the different reference of a referring expression that the speaker and addressee have in mind. The easiest
example is the sentence Callista is a good girl. The addressee might have the reference of someone named Callista who is not the speaker intended to mention.
Teodorescu 2012 mentions that unclear reference of anaphoric and cataphoric pronouns is the trigger of referential ambiguity. The example is:
29 xxvi.
John told Jack that Mary was waiting for him. In the example xxvi, the pronoun him might refer to John or Jack. Therefore, the
sentence becomes referential ambiguous.
4. Theories of Parts of Speech
