Hi Jim, We as linguists always try to (correctly) use grammar and punctuation so as to avoid ambiguity. However, sometimes it's best to leave it to the reader's interpretation and very often that's what the writer's looking for. Best, Ana (Jaco's official translator and interpreter) On Mon, 15 Jun 2020, 14:30 James Propp, <jamespropp@gmail.com> wrote:
Math gives us one way to dissect the ambiguity of sentences like “In New York City, someone is attacked by a pigeon every thirty seconds” (is it always the same person? is it always the same pigeon?) by way of quantifiers. Does linguistics have its own way of talking about the different interpretations of such a sentence?
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