From Ellen Kaisse in e-mail to me on 10/4 (yes, the blog mill grinds very very slowly on Ramona St.): a nice ambiguity from the Seattle Times, in the first sentence of the story:
[what EK wrote, with some bracketed amendments by me:] I read striking as an adjective meaning ‘notable’ and modifying language rather than the intended reading where striking is [the nominalization of] a verb with language as its direct object [AZ: the nominalization (together with language and a very long relative clause modifying language) is itself the direct object of the verb approved]. It was only the headline that alerted me that my first reading was the opposite of what was actually approved.
Now if you ask an ordinary person what’s gong on with that sentence, they’ll tell you that it’s ambiguous, and they’ll provide some attempt at a paraphrase (as a sufficient account of the ambiguity), but they’ll simplify things somewhat by disregarding that long relative cause and, in effect, localizing the source of the ambiguity in the expression striking language, telling you that in the Auburn City Council sentence this expression means two different things, ‘notable language’ or ‘removing language’ (from something), and maybe they’ll go on to localize the source even further in the word striking, saying that striking in striking language can mean either ‘notable’ or ‘removing’ (from something).
Ask a linguist, like Ellen or me, and even our briefest answer will go immediately to localizing the ambiguity in specific words that are the crux of the matter. We’ll identify the lexical items involved and supply some relevant properties of the words — what syntactic category they belong to (EK refers explicitly to adjective (Adj) and verb (V) and implicitly to noun (N)); perhaps what derivational and inflectional categories they belong to (implicit in our references to nominalization). And then, especially, we’ll tell you something about the syntactic constructions in which the words are related to one another (we’ll refer to modifying / attributive adjectives, to verbs with direct objects, and so on). Our very brief comments are laden with allusions to the structure of English — its morphology and syntax — as well as to its lexicon.
The linguists’ view is that the lexicon, morphology, and syntax of the language work together in such a way that a stretch of phonological material can convey two different meanings; when we confront an ambiguous expression, we see it not as a brute fact (as if people somehow memorize how phonological substance and semantics are paired with one another, expression by expression), but as the consequence of the system of the language. Surprise! There are two ways you can end up with striking language, two ways the expression can be analyzed. (There are, in fact, more than two; but there are at least the two EK told us about.)
Now I’m going to wade hip-deep into the system of English involved in striking language (and some similar expressions). Not to tell you everything, but to tell you just enough to show you that the system is both big and complex. Therefore, challenging. And therefore, wonderful to figure out. Contemplating stuff like this makes me happy.
