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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?
  

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.

  • 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.
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1 Answers
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

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