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Ambiguity
Ambiguity
Ambiguity
AMBIGUITY
A word, phrase, or
sentence is
ambiguous if it has
more than one
meaning. In other
words ambiguity
has more than one
interpretation.
TYPES OF AMBIGUITY
➢ Lexical Ambiguity
➢ Syntactic Ambiguity
➢ Semantic Ambiguity
LEXICAL AMBIGUITY
❑ The presence of two or more possible meanings within a single word
❑ Results from different word forms of the same sound
❑ By far the most common ambiguity used to create puns and other
types of word play
light.
Bank - an institution
- side of the riverside.
saw - past tense of see
- to cut with a saw
Example:
The word ‘magazine’ refer to the object itself as well as the company of that magazine.
A noun referring to a famous writer called Charles Dickens whereas in sentence Dickens
refers to a book which is written by Charles Dickens.
Homonyms are words with the same spelling and/or pronunciation that has entirely two
or more distinct meanings
Examples:
Homographs - words that are spelled the same have but different meanings.
Homophones - are words that sound alike but different meaning, and they are often
spelled differently.
different but
Polyseme same same or different
related
Lexical Ambiguity Examples:
Or is it a container for
porcelain eggs?
Im going to kill the cat with my tie.
They saw the man with the telescope.
SEMANTIC AMBIGUITY
❑ happens when a sentence contains an ambiguous word or phrase—
a word or phrase that has more than one meaning.
❑ Presents properties of both lexical and structural ambiguity
THE END
Prepared by:
Honeylit Quinto
Ma. Rhodora Theodorosa Ma. Nieva