Basic English Syntax with Exercises

ambiguity

1.3.5.2 Determiners

In the first sentence there is a specific cat that I am looking for, and the speaker obviously assumes the person who is addressed knows which specific cat he is talking about. The second sentence is, however, ambiguous. It could either mean that the speaker was looking for a specific cat, but assumed that the addressee does not know which cat is referred to, or it could mean that the speaker is looking for some non-specified cat and that any cat would satisfy the conditions of his search.

2.2.1 The subject

The verb hit has two arguments: the one who does the hitting, the agent, and the one who gets hit, the patient. But (53) is unambiguous: it must be interpreted with Henry as the agent and Thomas as the patient. Indeed, agent is a very typical Θ-role for a subject to have. Experiencer is also a typical subject Θ-role:

2.3.2 Movement

This sentence is no longer ambiguous between the two meanings. This is because we must interpret the moved element as a single constituent and not as two separate constituents that have been moved together. The same point can be made with the movement of wh-elements, as shown by the following:

2.3.3 Coordination

Just like in the case of movement, only constituents may be coordinated and two independent constituents cannot act as one single conjunction which is coordinated with another. To demonstrate this, recall the ambiguous sentence in (104) where the PP was either associated with the object DP or with the VP. Now, if we coordinate the string of words, the bank manager with the gun with the DP the security guard, the ambiguity is resolved:

4.1 Why the Noun is not the Head of the DP

In these cases both the nouns and the determiners are marked for number and so it is difficult to say where the number feature of the whole phrase is projected from. Indeed, even in those cases such as (8a) and (8b) where it looks as though the number is projected from the noun, we could argue that the determiner the is ambiguously marked for singular or plural and, like the other determiners, when it is singular it can only accompany a singular noun and when it is plural it can only accompany a plural noun. The issue therefore rests on which we take to be the head: the determiner or the noun. For this reason, we cannot use these observations to argue in favour of one or the other having head status but we must look elsewhere to resolve the issue.

5.2.1 Unaccusative verbs

These verbs are typically verbs of movement or location. Some of them are ambiguous, having an unaccusative sense and an agentive sense. For example, the verb sit can simply mean ‘be situated in a particular location’ (perhaps with a particular orientation), as in (8d), or it can mean ‘to adopt a posture in which most weight is supported by the rear end’ as in (9):

5.2.1 Unaccusative verbs

Apparent exceptions to this can probably be accounted for in terms of the ambiguity of the verb. For example:

5.2.3 Ergative verbs

Apparent exceptions to these observations may again be accounted for by assuming an ambiguous status of the verb involved. For example, the verb grow can apparently behave like an unaccusative:

5.2.3 Ergative verbs

In these cases, these verbs are unable to appear in there or locative inversion structures and so again this may be another case of ambiguity:

5.3.1 The auxiliary as a dummy

In these cases, there is an ambiguity that must be checked for. For example, what was seen in (164a) could either be taken to be an object (the treaty that was signed) or an event (the treaty being signed). It is the latter interpretation that is relevant here as this clearly involves a predication-like structure that simply lacks tense, similar to the examples in (161). Of course, the important observation is that here we have a passive construction involving a passive morpheme, but no passive auxiliary. This indicates that the function of the passive auxiliary is to bear an inflection rather than to add any semantic content.

5.4.3 Clausal modifiers

184a) is ambiguous in terms of who is doing the firing: it could be Harry or Freda. (184b) is not ambiguous however as here only Harry can do the hiring. What can account for this difference? We have seen that the structural position of the purpose clause affects what can be the controller and so it might be that there are different possible positions for the purpose clause within the structure. The structure of the main VP in (184a) is as follows: