Structural Ambiguity

Every language has its own syntactic sentence structure. Generally, in most of the language, the words in a sentence occur in a certain linear order though some language like Russian; Latin etc. display some freedom in sentence syntax. Furthermore, in certain language like English, linear order of words in a sentence determines the meaning.

For Example, the dog bits the man. The man bits the dog.

Both sentences have the same words. But it is the order that signifies the meaning. These kinds of structural errors otherwise called as Structural ambiguity or Syntactical ambiguity that puzzle the readers.

Structural ambiguity arises from the grammatical structure of a language. It means the structure or different ways in which words in a sentence can be related meaningfully to each other. The grammatical relations that most often produce structural ambiguity include misplaced modifiers, overuse of adverbs, elliptical constructions, and omitted punctuation. Sometimes, despite proper word order, sentence becomes ambiguous. Consider the following examples:

1)      The parents of a boy and girl will arrive soon. Here, the sentence is ambiguous as it has more than one meaning. We can derive many meaning from this sentence.  It can be parents of one or parents of both, the boy and girl.

If we group the same sentence in a different way then, the meaning will be different.

A)    For Example, (the parents of a boy) and girl will arrive soon. Here, it means that the parents of a boy and a girl will arrive soon.

B)    The parents (of a boy and girl) will arrive soon. Here, it means that the parents of both the boy and girl will arrive soon.

Thus, basing on the grouping or structure, any interpretation of the sentence can be possible.

2)      I brought a mouse. Here, the mouse connotes two meaning. It can be either ‘any of numerous small rodents typically resembling diminutive rats' or ‘a hand-operated electronic device used to move the cursor on computer screen.