LING 201 Lecture Notes - Lecture 15: Financial Institution
7 Nov 2016
School
Department
Course
Professor
Document Summary
I scratched the dog with a stick: you can scratch the dog holding a stick. Dog has the stick: or you are scratching the dog with a stick. These two different meanings are due to different word trees. Why is some ambiguity unavoidable: words have to be presented in a linear order. You can only say/read one word at a time. She called her boyfriend from australia: she is in australia, or her boyfriend is an australian citizen. This in an example of structural ambiguity. Lexical ambiguity: we went down to the bank yesterday. Or we went to the river side. Hierarchical structure: may be invisible upon first glance. Constituency: what is attaching to what. Can be replaced by a question such as who, what, when, where, why. Q: where did clarice play the accordion: a: under the table. Q: clarice played what under the table: a: the accordion.
