Ambiguity

Aspect of language

Word sense
She left her money on the bank.
Syntactic category
The old man the boats.
Structure
The boy saw the girl on the hill with the telescope.
Reference
The waiter finally brought the customer his eggs, but he wasn't hungry anymore.
Translation
alilala → he slept? he lay down?

What's needed in order to disambiguate

Global ambiguity: whole sentence is ambiguous
- Well, did you do it?
- And then I told her that was too much to ask.
- Why are you wearing THAT?
- He knocked her flat.
- She left her husband for the garbageman.
- I saw the numb skull just the other day.
- It's hard to eat pizza with chopsticks.
- Swahili relative clauses
  
  a- -na- -ye- -m- -penda
  
  he/she PRES REL him/her like
  
  'who likes him/her'
  'that he/she likes'
- it is broken → kimevunjika, kinavunjwa
Local ambiguity: portions of a sentence are ambiguous
- The soup pot covers are missing.
- The inexperienced band together.
- Have the students who missed the exam take it today.
- The astronomer married the star.
- Hakuchoka kwa sababu alilala kwa muda mrefu. → He isn't tired because he slept a long time.

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