Grammatical Ambiguity

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Introduction “A Scientific analysis of Language is carried out systematically on the basis of objectively verifiable observations and within the framework of some general theory of Language Structure“ S.K. Verma Linguistics is a scientific study of the systems / principles underlying human languages. It is scientific because it follows the general methodology of science (controlled observation, hypothesis-formation, analysis, generalization, prediction, testing by further observation and confirmation, modification or rejection of the hypothesis). A Linguist is a person who studies language in all…show more content…
In the connected speech sentences or phrases made of different words may be pronounced alike (homophonous) and thus become potentially ambiguous. (Ullmann, 1962, p.156) For example: 1) Sun's rays meet. 2) Son's raise meat. The English sentences 1and 2 are pronounced alike and therefore ambiguous as they refer to different information. Grammatical Ambiguity: Grammatical Ambiguity may arise either due to identical grammatical forms giving different meaning or due to single sequence of words having more than one structural organization (hierarchical structure). The English adjectival suffix 'able' means differently when it occurs after different verbs. Example: Desirable "wished for as being attractive" Readable "easy or enjoyable to read" Eatable "fit to be eaten" Debatable "not certain open to discussion" In spoken Tamil the case Suffix oota functions both as Possessive case Suffix and Associative/ Sociative case suffix. Example: Possessive ennoTa puttakam " My Book" VaNTTyooTa cakkaram "Wheel of a Cart"…show more content…
Similarly the following Tamil sentences also show grammatical ambiguity due to different structural organizations. rajaa veesam pooTTaan 1) King disguise/costume put on. 2) The King put on some costumes/disguise. 3) (Someone) put on the costume/disguise of the King. Lexical Ambiguity: The most common Ambiguity than English Language has is Lexical Ambiguity where by a word has more than one meaning (Bach,n.d.) . The most frequent everyday words that be considered as confusing are Nouns such as 'chip', 'pen', 'suit'. Meanwhile for Verbs are 'call'. 'Draw' and 'run'. The Adjectives consist of 'deep' 'dry' and 'hard'. According to Bach (n.d.) there are various test could be done for ambiguity problem and one of them is by using the two unrelated antonyms to one ambiguous word. For example: the word 'Hard' this has both 'soft' and 'easy' as opposites. 1) John went to the bank 2) I convinced her children are noisy. 3) The girl told the story cried. This is called as Lexical Ambiguity, because it is the result of one of the words having more than one possible meaning. The next sentence is syntactically ambiguous (the syntax or grammar, can be understood in more than one

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