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Library's collection Library's IT development CancelNowadays, people need more actual and complete information. To get that
information, there are several ways. Newspaper is one way to get information. In
reading the newspaper, it is important to get what the newspaper intends to say.
Therefore, newspaper should present information clearly. However, sentences
sometimes produce more than one meaning that may cause ambiguity. The
ambiguity can be because of structure. This structural ambiguity can later on
confuse the readers. Therefore, the writer wants to conduct a study about
structural ambiguity. In addition, Your Letters is a column in The Jakarta Post
newspaper where readers can send their letters in which, based on the writer?s
observation, structural ambiguity can occur. Thus, it leads the writer to choose
Your Letters of The Jakarta Post newspaper as his source of data.
From this study, the writer wants to know how the sentences are
structurally ambiguous and what types of grammar points and elements of Phrase
Structure Rules that can cause structural ambiguity. Finally, this study also
intends to reveal what grammar points and elements of Phrase Structure Rules that
mostly cause potential structural ambiguity. This study takes 19 letters from Your
Letters of The Jakarta Post newspaper. The writer collected the data within a week
time. Moreover, he uses the theory of Marianne Celce-Murcia and Diane Larsen-Freeman
to do the analysis.
Through the findings, he found 20 potentially ambiguous sentences. From
those sentences, he found two most predominant grammar points that could cause
structural ambiguity: conjoined constituents and prepositions. He found 14
ambiguous sentences in conjoined constituents and 6 ambiguous sentences in
prepositions. From that number, the writer found 70% frequency of ambiguous
sentences occurrence in conjoined constituents and 30% frequency of ambiguous
sentences occurrence in prepositions. He also found two most predominant
elements of Phrase Structure Rules: Noun Phrases and Prepositional Phrases
(Ambiguity in Prepositional Phrase and Ambiguity of Noun Phrase in
Prepositional Phrase). He found 9 ambiguous sentences in Noun Phrase and 11
ambiguous sentences in Prepositional Phrase (6 ambiguous sentences of
Prepositional Phrase and 5 ambiguous sentences of Noun Phrase in Prepositional
Phrase). From that number, the writer found 45% of the ambiguous sentences
were about Noun Phrase and 55% of the ambiguous sentences were about
Prepositional Phrase (30% ambiguous sentences of Prepositional Phrase and 25%
ambiguous sentences of Noun Phrase in Prepositional Phrase).
In terms of the connection between the grammar points and the Phrase
Structure Rules, conjoined constituents deals with two of the Phrase Structure
Rules that tend to cause structural ambiguity, namely NP a NP + conj + NP and
PrepP a Prep + NP + conj + NP. Then, prepositions are about the Prepositional
Phrase with the following pattern: PrepP a Prep + NP.
To conclude, when the ambiguity is about conjoined constituents, it does
not affect the meaning of the whole sentence, but the particular phrase containing
the conjoined words only. However, when it concerns with prepositions, the
ambiguity can affect the whole sentence meaning because a preposition can be as
a verb modifier or a noun modifier in a sentence.