English: A tiny bit of Syntax
So this is from English 2, so yeah, you need to know a tad of Linguistics first (?) Head vs Dependant Languages priorize certain things over others, thus, in certain things there’s a Head and one or more Dependants: At Phrase level, you have at least the following 3 Head - Dependent(s) combinations: 1) Possessed noun (H) - Possessor (D) For Example: The boy’s (D) car (H) 2) Adposition (H) - Object of adposition (D) Example: In (H) [the house] (D) 3) Noun (H) - Modifying Adjective/Noun (D) The good (D) dog (H) At Clause level, you have the following 2: 1) Predicate (H) - Arguments and Adjuncts (D) I (D) ate (H) [an apple] (D) [in the park] (D) 2) Aux. Verb (H) - Lexical Verb(s)/Non-finite Aux. verbs (D) It would (H) have (D) been (D) done (D). At Sentence level, you have the following: 1) Main-clause predicate (H) - Relative or subordinate clause (D) I killed the boy (H) who lived (D) Lexical and Structural Ambiguity: Some Examples Lexical ambiguity a) I [saw [a man] [with a telescope]] b) I [saw [a man [with a telescope]]] Structural ambiguity a) Fruit flies [like [rotten bananas]] b) Fruit [flies [like rotten bananas]] Structural ambiguity a) British [left [waffles [on Falkland Islands]]] b) British left [waffles [on Falkland Islands ]] Lexical ambiguity a) Marilyn [wrote [an article [on a train]]] (As in: An article regarding a train) b) Marilyn [wrote [an article [on a train]]] (As in: An article while on a train) c) Marilyn [wrote [an article [on a train]]] (As in: Literally wrote on the train walls)