Moon7296 Posted 15 years ago
Grammar
Structural(syntatic) ambiguity [exam]
0. Visiting relatives can be boring.
The sentence is structurally(syntactically) ambiguous; It can be boring to visit relatives VS Relatives who are visiting can be boring.
1. She is a rare butterfly collector.
2. The big cat chased it with a very sharp knife.
3. The mountaintop is hard to see in the fog.
4. Look at the messy child's handwriting.
5. The boy with the hat sat on a mushroom with green spots.
6. Students from six states in the country attended the luncheon in our honor.
Based on the explanation for #0, I tried finding correct examples. Correct ones I thought were #1,2,3 and 5. But the answer is #1,4 and 6.
What(why) do you think?
The sentence is structurally(syntactically) ambiguous; It can be boring to visit relatives VS Relatives who are visiting can be boring.
1. She is a rare butterfly collector.
2. The big cat chased it with a very sharp knife.
3. The mountaintop is hard to see in the fog.
4. Look at the messy child's handwriting.
5. The boy with the hat sat on a mushroom with green spots.
6. Students from six states in the country attended the luncheon in our honor.
Based on the explanation for #0, I tried finding correct examples. Correct ones I thought were #1,2,3 and 5. But the answer is #1,4 and 6.
What(why) do you think?
Top answer
Hi, 0. Visiting relatives can be boring. The sentence is structurally(syntactically) ambiguous; It can be boring to visit relatives VS Relatives who are visiting can be boring.
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0
Hi,
0. Visiting relatives can be boring.
The sentence is structurally(syntactically) ambiguous; It can be boring to visit relatives VS Relatives who are visiting can be boring.
1. She is a rare butterfly collector. Could be ambiguous. What does 'rare' apply to?
2. The big cat chased it with
0. Visiting relatives can be boring.
The sentence is structurally(syntactically) ambiguous; It can be boring to visit relatives VS Relatives who are visiting can be boring.
1. She is a rare butterfly collector. Could be ambiguous. What does 'rare' apply to?
2. The big cat chased it with
0