Attachment ambiguity in natural language processing, Define attachment ambiguity, examples of attachment ambiguity, attachment ambiguity is a type of syntactic ambiguity
Attachment ambiguity is a type of syntactic ambiguity
Syntactic ambiguity
It is a type of ambiguity where the doubt is about the syntactic structure of
the sentence. That is, there is a possibility that a sentence could be parsed
in many syntactical forms (a sentence may be interpreted in more than one way).
The doubt is about which one among different syntactical forms is correct.
For
example, the sentence “old men and women” is ambiguous. Here, the doubt is that
whether the adjective old is attached with both
men and women or men alone.
Attachment ambiguity
It arises from uncertainty of attaching a phrase or clause to a part of
sentence. It usually happens when a sentence has more than two prepositional
phrases.
Example
1
In
the sentence “the boy saw the girl with the telescope”, the uncertainty is
about relating the prepositional phrase “with the telescope” to “the
boy” or to “the girl”. This could end up with the following meaning based
on the attachment;
1. The
boy saw the girl carrying a telescope
2. The
boy saw the girl through the telescope
The
first meaning arises it we attach the prepositional phrase with “the
girl” whereas the second one arises if we attach the prepositional
phrase with “the boy”.
Example
2
Consider
the following sentence;
“Guna
ate an ice cream with fruits from Chennai”
In
this sentence, we have two prepositional phrases “with fruits” and “from
Chennai”. Here the possible meanings are as follows;
1. Guna
who is from Chennai ate an ice cream filled with fruits.
2. Guna
ate an ice cream filled with fruits and the ice cream is brought from Chennai.
3. Guna
who is from Chennai ate the ice cream with the help of fruits.
4. Guna
with the help of fruits ate the ice cream which is brought from Chennai
Here
we got four possibilities due to two prepositional phrases. Each one arises
from how we attach the prepositional phrases “with fruits” and “from
Chennai” to either “Guna” or the “ice cream”.
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