AMBIGUITY

Ambiguity is a sentence, clause, or word that has more than one meaning. Kinds of ambiguity:

a.       Lexical ambiguity occurs when there are two words have same form.

Example:   INDONESIA                        

      “Genting”. Can give meaning critical (gawat) or name of roof nama atap).

ENGLISH

      “Bank”. Can give meaning:

1.      Place where money is kept safely.

2.      Land sloping up beside a river (lahan miring di samping sungai).

b.      Grammatical ambiguity occurs when the word combine with another word and commonly in sentence, clause, and phrase form.

Example: INDONESIA

Istri pegawai yang gemuk itu berasal dari Surabaya.

Can give meaning:

1.   The fat one reverse to employee (yang gemuk adalah pegawai)

2.   The fat one reveres to employee’s wife. (yang gemuk adalah istri pegawai).

Ø Types of grammatical ambiguity:

1.    Grammatical ambiguity is caused by word formation gramatically.

Example: will you join us for dinner?” You (singular) or you (plural).

2.    Grammatical ambiguity is caused by same phrase.

 Example: “I met a number of old friends and acquaintance”. Old friends and old acquaintance will not ambiguity rise if we look from the context and the intonation but “old” in this the reason why the sentence be ambiguity, because the “old” can explain ‘friends’ or acquaintance’.

3.    Grammatical ambiguity occurs when there is weakness of sentence context.

 Ex: ‘we now have dress shirt on sale for men with 16 necks. The sentence can give meaning:

a.    Now we’re closeout apparel for men with a 16 neck . (Sekarang kami sedang obral pakaian untuk lelaki dengan 16 leher)

b.      Now we’re closeout apparel for men with size 16 inch collar. (Sekarang kami sedang obral pakaian untuk lelaki dengan ukuran kerah 16 inch).

NOTE: there is a word “inch” on the sentence after word 16 that make it understandable.

4.    Grammatical ambiguity occurs because negligence in grammatical structure.

Ex:  The police shoot the rioters with guns.

Sentence can give meaning:

1.      Police shot the intruder  with a gun. (Polisi menembak pengacau itu dengan pistol).

2.      Police shot the intruder with the rifle. (Polisi menembak pengacau yang membawa senapan itu).

c.       Phonetic ambiguity is caused by similar sound for some syllable.

Example: ENGLISH:

                                              “a near” [ənIə(r)] (sebuah ginjal) and “an ear” [ən Iə(r)] ( sebuah telinga).

                                              “Ice cream” (es krim) and I scream (saya menjerit).

INDONESIA

                                              “Beruang”. Can give meaning:

1. People who have money.
2. The name of the animal.

Note:

To avoid ambiguity or error in the interpretation of a sentence should be equipped with a hyphen (-). Function hyphen in writing words to mark the reading of phrases so as not to cause ambiguity. Function of the hyphen is the same as the function of the slash (/) in writing of the sentence. Put a hyphen between the words read by a pause.

Polysemy is also ambiguous. So what's the difference? The answer is Polysemy and ambiguity equally ambiguous. Only if the multiplicity of meaning derived from the word Polysemy whereas multiplicity of meaning in grammatical ambiguity comes from the larger unit is a phrase or sentence, and occurs as a result of a different interpretation of grammatical structure

Influenced Factors of Ambiguous:

1.       Different grammatical interpretation

2.      Word released.