Structural ambiguity in syntactic phrases construction.

Abstract

In a world where information and reliable communications are crucial, a clear unambiguous message is of utmost importance. Phrases and sentences are essential for written and spoken communication. English syntax as part of microlinguistics as a branch of linguistics, studies phrases and sentence structure (BURTON-ROBERTS, 2016). In this scenario, this study takes on the issue of Structural Ambiguity in Syntactical Phrases Construction, considering that “Structural ambiguity, occurs when the meaning of the component words can be combined in more than one way (O’Grady et al. 1997)” (SIMATUPANG, 2007, p. 100). Two approaches in dealing with structural ambiguity (SA) are considered, namely: Simatupang (2007) and Taghiyev (2018), in order to understand: 1 – Which syntactic structures, aside from prepositional phrases, tend to be susceptible to structural ambiguity in written and spoken English contexts?; and 2 – How can constituency help to predict structural ambiguity in written and spoken English? To answer these questions it was followed the approach by Burton-Roberts (2016) in relation to structure of phrases; a contrast of written versus spoken English features, according to Simatupang (2007) and Taghiyev (2018) was made, followed by their conceptualization of structural ambiguity; syntactical trees were used as support for contrasting the possible solutions of SA. The analysis of the results confirms that prepositional phrases are highly susceptible to SA in written and spoken English contexts, and aside from that, nominal phrases and verb phrases, in a decreasing order of occurrence. Constituency played a key role in identifying multiple subjacent structures in a sentence, what characterize SA. It also allowed to disambiguate the sentence, either by the movement of the constituents, or by addition of new phrases in the sentence for the written mode. The use of supra-segmental devices such as contrastive stress, pause, and tone level was essential to disambiguate sentences in the spoken English mode. Last but not least, deciding which constituent a syntagma belongs to was decisive in disambiguating a sentence. The importance of the results was highlighted in communication scenarios; in EFL contexts for teachers-to-be, in understanding and solving structural ambiguity, also in applying this knowledge in the field.