Grammar: 💡 Effective Word Choice & Style - Advanced (C2) - Lesson 6: Exploring Grammatical Ambiguity and its uses/avoidance

Proficiency C2

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The Prism

Exploring Grammatical Ambiguity

[Image of light passing through a prism]

"Visiting relatives can be boring."

Meaning A The relatives are boring people.

Meaning B The act of visiting them is boring.

"I saw the man with the telescope."

Meaning A I used a telescope to see him.

Meaning B He was holding a telescope.

Why it matters:

• Law & Science: We must remove ambiguity for precision.
• Literature & Humor: We use ambiguity for puns, poetry, and double entendres.

Disambiguation 🔍

How to fix (or exploit) it.

Scope Ambiguity

"Every student read a book."

They each read their own book. (30 students = 30 books).

They all read the same single book. (30 students = 1 book).

Garden Path Sentences

"The old man the boat."

At first, you think "old man" is a person. But wait...

Here, "Man" is a Verb (to operate).
"The old (people) man (operate) the boat."

Ambiguity Test 🧠

Identify the confusion.

1. "I saw her duck."

2. "They are cooking apples."

3. How to fix: "He fed her cat food."

Mission 📝

Master of Double Meanings.

Task: The Headline

Journalists use ambiguity to make headlines short and catchy (called "Crash Blossoms").

"Stolen painting found by tree."

Rewrite this in your notebook to be clear (Unambiguous):

• Option A: "A tree found the painting." (Absurd)
• Option B: "The painting was found next to a tree." (Correct)