Difference Between Lexical and Structural Ambiguity

Lexical ambiguity occurs when a word has more than one possible meanings. Structural ambiguity is a situation where one sentence has more than one meaning due to its sentence structure. This is the key difference between lexical and structural ambiguity.

1. What is a structural ambiguity?
2. What are the examples of lexical ambiguity?
3. What is a structurally ambiguous sentence?
4. What are the three types of ambiguity?
5. What's an example of ambiguous?
6. What are some examples of ambiguity?
7. What does lexical mean?
8. What are the examples of lexical?
9. What are two forms of lexical ambiguity?
10. What is an example of ambiguous sentence?
11. How would you know if the sentence is ambiguous or not?
12. How do you disambiguate ambiguous sentences?

What is a structural ambiguity?

Structural ambiguity occurs when a phrase or sentence has more than one underlying structure. The phrase can be disambiguated by putting it in a sentence with some sort of formal signals which help the reader or hearer to recognize the sentence structure.

What are the examples of lexical ambiguity?

Lexical ambiguity is caused when two words have the same form (homonymy or homophony) or when a word has more than one meaning (polysemy). * A classic example of lexical ambiguity involves the word(s) bank. 1. I went to the bank.

What is a structurally ambiguous sentence?

What constitutes structural ambiguity? When a sentence or clause can be interpreted in more than one way because of the way it is constructed, it structurally ambiguous. The ambiguity or confusion comes from the way the sentence is put together – the order of the words – and not from the definition of the words.

What are the three types of ambiguity?

Three types of ambiguity are categorised as potential ambiguity: lexical, syntactical, and inflective.

• Lexical Ambiguity. Lexical ambiguity is the most commonly known form of ambiguity (Reilly 1991; Walton 1996). ...
• Syntactical Ambiguity. ...
• Inflective Ambiguity.

What's an example of ambiguous?

Ambiguity, or fallacy of ambiguity, is a word, phrase, or statement which contains more than one meaning. ... For instance, it is ambiguous to say “I rode a black horse in red pajamas,” because it may lead us to think the horse was wearing red pajamas.

What are some examples of ambiguity?

Common Examples of Ambiguity

• The bark was painful. (Could mean a tree's bark was rough or a dog's bark communicated pain or hurt the listener's ears).
• You should bring wine or beer and dessert. (Could mean that you must bring just wine, wine and dessert, or beer and dessert).
• Harry isn't coming to the party.

What does lexical mean?

1 : of or relating to words or the vocabulary of a language as distinguished from its grammar and construction Our language has many lexical borrowings from other languages.

What are the examples of lexical?

Examples are cat, traffic light, take care of, by the way, and it's raining cats and dogs. Lexical items can be generally understood to convey a single meaning, much as a lexeme, but are not limited to single words.

What are two forms of lexical ambiguity?

Two types of lexical ambiguity are traditionally distinguished: polysemy (one word with multiple senses) vs. homonymy (different words that happen to sound the same). Both cases involve an ambiguous word form; the difference lies in how the information is organized in the speaker's mental lexicon.

What is an example of ambiguous sentence?

Examples of Ambiguity: Sarah gave a bath to her dog wearing a pink t-shirt. Ambiguity: Is the dog wearing the pink t-shirt? I have never tasted a cake quite like that one before!

How would you know if the sentence is ambiguous or not?

An ambiguous sentence has two or more possible meanings within a single sentence or sequence of words. ... Problem: This sentence is ambiguous because it is not clear if Mr Smith was guilty of keeping the snake in the Magistrates Court, or guilty of keeping the snake after he caught it from a neighbour's property.

How do you disambiguate ambiguous sentences?

To disambiguate a sentence, you must write at least two sentences that are free of the original ambiguity. 2. Add no new meaning-bearing elements: this is a matter of being charitable to the speaker/writer, even if it means preserving an element or elements of vagueness, which is a separate issue.