On this website, I found a helpful explanation of technical differences between phrase structure ambiguity and deep structure ambiguity that clarifies some questions we had in class. Using the sentence "the duck is ready to eat", the website explains that "duck" can either be the logical subject or the logical object. Also, on the third page of the article there are more examples of phrase structure (surface-structure) ambiguity and deep structure ambiguity.
The study that these examples are part of is also fairly interesting. It examines how children of different ages detect ambiguity in sentences and is slightly related to our discussion today about children's acquisition of language.
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2 comments:
Rachel, thanks for pointing everyone to this article! The study and examples nicely complement today's lecture.
ah! thanks! i was studying for the final and this post really helped clear some stuff up!
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