Direct Criteria for Ambiguity
Three different types of criteria for ambiguity will be
proposed. It may ultimately be possible to show that they all reduce to a
single basic criterion, but here they will be presented separately. Generally
speaking, unless there are specific reasons why one or other of the criteria
should be inapplicable (some of these reasons will be discussed below, we shall
expect an ambiguous item to satisfy all the criteria.
The first criterion is frequently difficult to apply in
practice, but it is conceptually important. It is that the senses of an
ambiguous word form should not in every case be totally conditioned by their
contexts, unlike the interpretations which arise as a result of contextual
modulation. This means that an ambiguous word form set in a disambiguating
context may well carry more information than can be accounted for in terms of
interaction between the context-independent meaning of the word form, and the
semantic properties of the context. In cases of contextual modulations, on the
other hand, all information is derived from these sources.
Consider sentences 16 and 17:
16. Arthur washed and polished the car.
17. John lubricated the car.
The most likely interpretation of 16 is that not every part
of the car underwent washing and polishing, but the exterior surface only. What
is the basis for this conclusion? It is derived entirely from the general
meaning of car, together with the
semantic properties of the context (remember that general knowledge concerning
cars and operations carried out on them is, on the view of meaning adopted in
this book, embedded in the meaning of car,
wash, polish, etc). A similar account can be given of the most likely
interpretation of car in 17. Or take
the case of monarch in 14 (repeated here for convenience):
14. The Ruritanian monarch is expecting her second baby.
We can be virtually certain that the monarch in question is a
queen, because of the restricting effect of the context on the general meaning
of monarch. Notice that a similar
interpretation would arise, and no loss of information would result, if monarch were replaced by a synonym or
paraphrase such as sovereign, or crowned head (and automobile would interact in the same way with the context if it
were substituted for car in 16 and
17). Contrast these, however, with bank
in 18 and 19:
18. Her husband is the manager of a local bank.
19. At this point, the bank was covered with brambles.
Let us try to account for the (most probable) different
interpretations of bank in the way
that we did for car. It is first
necessary to decide on a synonym or paraphrase of the context-invariant meaning
of bank. This already poses problems,
but let us say, for the sake of argument, that it is equivalent to place. We can then observe the effect of
substituting place for bank in 18 and
19:
20. Her husband is the manager of a local place.
21. At this point, the place was covered with the brambles.
There is quite clearly a loss of information, so we have
failed to show that the interpretations of bank
are the result of contextual modulation of a general meaning. It may be
concluded, therefore, that the different contexts are selecting discrete senses
of bank. Another instance of
incomplete contextual determination is to be observed with dog. Let us for the moment take it as established that dog has a general sense, denoting the
whole species, irrespective of sex. In sentences such as 22, however, dog has a
more specific meaning, and refer only to males:
22. John prefers bitches to dogs
Now it might be argued that the resultant sense of dog here is caused by contextual
modulation of the general sense: dog
cannot in this context refer to females if logical consistency is to be
preserved, which leaves only males as possible referents. Consider now,
however,23:
23. Incredibly, John prefers an aged, half-blind bitch to a
dog, as his canine companion.
If the interpretation of dog
in this sentence were the result of contextual modulation of the general
sense, it ought to include reference to, for instance, young females with good
eyesight. But once again, it refers to male dogs only. This reading cannot be
explained by contextual modulation, so it must be the result of selection from
a set of discrete possibilities. In fact, the same is true of 22. That
contextual modulation of the general sense of dog cannot explain the specific interpretation in 22 is shown by
the lack of a parallel specific interpretation of canine (in its jocular use as a noun ) when it is substituted for
dog:
24. ? John prefers bitches to canines.
(We shall consider below why 24 should be anomalous)
Some understanding of the way the semantic effects of
selection may be independent of, and indeed may transcend, those properties of
the context which are responsible for the selection can be gleaned from the
following analogy. Suppose that is known that a certain event is to occur on a
certain day, but may take place at only one of two possible times, namely,
12.00 n00n or 12.00 midnight. If one were subsequently to receive a report that
when the event occurred, the sun had set, one would be able to infer that it
had taken place at exactly 12.00 midnight. The precision of this inference goes
well beyond what is explicitly present in the report, which acts rather like a
trigger setting off one of two preexisting possibilities. In a similar manner,
the context of dog in 22 and 23 acts like a trigger which activates one of a
set of pre-existing bundles of semantic properties, each having a precision and
richness not directly sanctioned by the context. In principle all ambiguous
items should be capable of manifesting these characteristics.
Our second criterion for ambiguity is that separate senses
should be independently maximisable.
Under certain conditions, the application of certain terms must be maximised
within the current universe of discourse, even at the expense of oddness.
Consider 25 (which resembles 24):
25: ? Mary likes mares better than horses.
One might have thought that the context makes it clear that
the context makes it clear that horse in
to be interpreted as “stallions”; however, such an interpretation is not
available for this type of sentence. The reason is that since mares have been
mentioned, they fall within the current universe of discourse, and by the rule
of maximization (the details of which are not entirely clear) must be included
in the reference of horses. This, of
course, leads to logical inconsistency, and hence oddness. (Notice, however,
that there is no anomaly if the reference of horses is EXPLICITLY restricted: Mary prefers mares to horses which
can sire foals or Mary prefers mares
to these horses uttered in a situation where only stallions are present.)
On the other hand; 26, unlike 25, is perfectly normal:
26. John prefers
bitches to dogs.
The general sense of dog
would of course give rise to anomaly in 26, because of the rule of
maximisation. The reason 26 is not odd is that dog has another sense, which even when maximised excludes bitches,
and this is automatically selected by the context. By contrast, 27 selects the
general reading of dog (the specific
reading would be odd here, but not for reasons connected with maximisation):
27. Arthur breeds dogs.
Thus 26 and 27 taken together constitute strong evidence that
dog is ambiguous.
The existence of two independent senses of dog, each
independently maximisable, is responsible for the fact that A’s question in 28,
if the dog in question is female, can be truthfully answered either ‘Yes’ or
‘No’ (depending on which sense the respondent believes the questioner to be
intending):
28. A: Is that a dog?
B: (i) Yes, it’s a spaniel.
(ii) No, it’s a
bitch.
There is no parallel set of circumstances in which the
question in 29 can be truthfully answered ‘Yes’ or ‘No’:
29: A: Is the subject of this poem a monarch?
B: (i) Yes, it
is a queen.
(ii) ? No,
it is a king.
Because there is only one sense of monarch, namely, the
general one, and because its reference must be maximised, if the subject of the
poem was a king or a queen, then ‘Yes’ is the only truthful answer. As with 28,
situations can be imagined in which the questions in 30 and 31 can be
truthfully answered either negatively or positively:
30. A: Has Charles changed his position?
B: (i) Yes, he’s
now sitting next to the chairman.
(ii) No, he
still supports corporal punishment.
31. A: Did Arthur make it to the bank?
B: (i) Yes, he’s
a strong swimmer.
(ii) No, he
was arrested as soon as he came out of the water.
The same should be true, in principle, of any truly ambiguous
expression.12
Ambiguity tests of the third kind utilities the fact that
independent senses of a lexical form are antagonistic to one another; that is
to say, they cannot be brought into play simultaneously without oddness.
Contexts which do activate more than one sense at a time give rise to the
variety of oddness we have labeled zeugma:
32.? John and his driving license expired last Thursday.
The simultaneous bringing into play of two senses can be
effected either by coordination, as in 32, where John and his driving license select different senses of the verb expire, or by anaphora, as in 33:
33.? John’s and his driving license
expired last Thursday; so did John.
So did is an anaphoric verb phrase; that is
to say, its referential properties operate not directly, but indirectly,
through a previously mentioned verb phrase, in this case expired last Thursday,
which must be re-applied, this time with John
as subject. But since this demands a different sense from the one appropriate
to its first occurrence, the result is zeugma.
A general term cannot give rise to zeugma in this way:
34. My cousin, who is pregnant, was
born on the same day as Arthur’s, who is the father.
Arthur’s
refers anaphorically through cousin.
The context makes it clear that the two cousins are of different sexes;
however, the sentence is not zeugmatic, so we may conclude that cousin does not have two senses “make
cousin” and “ female cousin”.
Antagonism of senses also lies behind
the so-called identity test for ambiguity. 13 In 35, each part of
the sentence contains an occurrence, either direct, or indirect via anaphora,
of the ambiguous adjective light, and
can therefore in theory be interpreted in two ways:
35. Mary is wearing a light coat; so
is Sue.
However, the whole sentence does not
have four (i.e.2 X2) interpretations, but two only. This is because the same
reading of light must be selected in
each part: either both ladies are wearing “undark” coats, or both are wearing
‘unheavy” coats. What is termed the crossed
interpretation, with each part of the sentence manifesting a different
sense, is prohibited. This prohibition is not a mysterious property of the
grammatical process of anaphora; it is simply a consequence of the fact that
light resists, so it were, the simultaneous activation of more than one of its
senses. General terms allow crossed interpretations:
36. Mary has adopted a child; so has
Sue.
There are four possible distributions
of sexes compatible with this sentence, since there is no requirement that the
two children should be of the same sex.
Some difficult cases
In this section the operation of
ambiguity tests will be illustrated by applying them to a selection of
difficult cases. The difficulties mostly concern tests based on the antagonism
of sister-senses (i.e. senses associated with a single lexical form). It is not
possible simply to dispense with such tests, because there are occasions,
especially when dealing with highly context-bound readings which do not appear
in ambiguous sentences, when they are the only practicable way of diagnosing
ambiguity.
I.
The
first example involves the unit-type ambiguity. This is quite easy to
demonstrate by means of the Yes/No-test:
37. A: Is this the jacket you want?
B: (i) Yes. (it’s the type I want)
(ii) No. (this particular one is
shop-soiled)
But it is much more difficult to show antagonism; many contexts which
might be expected to manifest it do not:
38. this is our best-selling jacket:
do try it on.
Jacket in the first clause clearly must
have a type reading-one cannot repeatedly sell the same individual jacket. One
might have thought that only a particular unit of the type could be ‘tried
on’, but that seems not to be the case.
One must beware of drawing hasty conclusions in this area. As it happens, it is
possible to find contexts which isolate the two readings, and when these are
yoked together, zeugma results. Sentence 39 allows only the ‘unit’ reading for skirt 39 (this seems to be a property of
belong):
39. That skirt belongs to Mary.
Sentence
40 can only bear a type reading:
40. My sister has the skirt Sue is
wearing now.
Try to
link these two readings together anaphorically, and the antagonism becomes
plain:
41. ? the skirt sue is wearing belongs
to Mary; my sister has it, too.
II.
It
not infrequently happens that ambiguous readings are related in such a way that
in certain contexts one reading entails the other. Such cases are a common
cause of apparent failure of the zeugma-test 9often called the ‘pun-test’) or
the identity test. The two readings of dog
are a case in point.14In 42, for example, it appears that a crossed
interpretation is possible, in that Mary’s dog could well be male, and Bill’s
female:
42. Mary bought a dog; so did Bill.
Does this contradict the evidence presented above that dog is ambiguous? The answer is that it
does not. When dog occurs in a
sentential context in which the specific interpretation entails the general
interpretation, we cannot be sure which sense is operative when reference is
made to a male dog: the two senses under these circumstances are effectively
inseparable. Hence the normality of 42 when the dogs referred to are of
opposite sexes cannot be used as evidence against the existence of two senses
of dog, since it can be fully accounted for by claiming that only the general
sense is operative. However, the situation is much clearer when dog occurs in a
context where neither sense entails the other, as in 43:
43.
Arthur wants to know if that is a dog; so does Mike.
A moment’s thought will convince the reader that the crossed
reading is prohibited here; this sentence cannot be used to describe a
situation where Arthur knows that the animal in question is an Alsatian, but in
unsure of its sex, while Mike knows that it is female, but thinks it might be a
wolf. The pun-test, too, demands non-entailing contexts:
44a. Dogs can become pregnant at 12
months. (General sense only)
b. Dogs mature later than bitches. (specific sense only).
c. ? Dogs can become pregnant at 12 months, but mature later than
bitches.
III.
Entailment
between readings also bedevils attempts to demonstrate antagonism between the
“exactly” and “at least” interpretations of numerals and other expressions of
quantity.15The Yes/No-test
suggests that this is a genuine ambiguity:
45. A: Have you got £10 in your wallet?
B: (i) Yes. In fact, I’ve got £12.
(ii) No. I’ve got £12
However, John has
(exactly) £10 entails John has (at least) £10, which perhaps explains why 46 is
not zeugmatic:
46. You need £100 in your account to qualify for free banking.
Arthur has it, now that he has
added £50 to the £50 that was already there.
The
first mention of £100 clearly demands an “at least”
interpretation what Arthur has is “exactly” £100; one might therefore not expect
the it of the second sentence to be
able to refer anaphorically to £100 in the first sentence without
antagonism. However, because of the entailment referred to above, the original
and anaphoric occurrences of £100 can both be given the “at least”interpretation,
thus avoiding antagonism. It is possible to construct isolating contexts which
reveal antagonism, but they are extremely cumbersome:
47a. John, with £11, and Bill, with £12, both have the £10 necessary to open a savings
account. (“at least”)
b. Tom, too, now has £10, having spent £2 out of his original £12. (“exactly” reading forced by now)
necessary to open a savings account.
(“at least”)
c. ? John, with £11, has the £10 necessary to open a savings
account, Tom, too, now has it, having spent £2 out of his original £12.
IV.
The
case of door is interesting (a group
of related words such as window, hatch,
sky-light, etc. behave similarly). Two senses of door may be observed in
48, which can be truthfully answered either ‘Yes’ or ‘No’ in the following
situation: the door in question has a ‘cat-flap’, and is standing open: the cat
goes through the cat-flap, but not through the doorway:
48. Did the cat go through the door?
Once again, difficulties arise with the antagonism criteria.
It might be predicted, for instance, that 49 would be zeugmatic, since what is
smashed (the door-panel) is different from what is bricked up (the doorway):16
49. The door
was smashed in so often that it had to be bricked up.
But there is no anomaly of any kind. Again, it appears that
contexts of a particular kind must be avoided if the test is to succeed. In
this case it is the part-whole relationship which is to blame. For certain
predicates, applicability to parts entails applicability to wholes
corresponding to the parts. Thus, if I touch the table-leg, by doing so I necessarily touch the table; if the tea-pot handle
is broken, so is the tea-pot, and so
on. It seems likely that this entailment is interfering with antagonism in49-
both events are interpreted as happening to the ‘global door’, of which the
door-panel is a part. The remedy, as before, is to avoid such contexts, and to
use, to isolate the senses, only those contexts in which part does not entail
whole (or, better still, contexts where part entails not-whole). When this
done, the antagonism of the senses is easily seen:
50. ? We took
the door off its hinges and then walked through it.
The moral to be drawn from these examples is that apparent compatibility
of readings must not be hastily accepted as proof of generality: each case must
be examined carefully to determine
whether there are special factors preventing the appearance of zeugma. It may
be reasonably confidently assumed that the different criteria for ambiguity
which have been described in fact are
sensitive to the same underlying semantic properties, and that in the absence
of ‘special factors’ will provide identical diagnoses.
