Taxonomy of Structural Ambiguity in Humour With Reference To Translation Google 'class ambiguity'
It is found that there are many ambiguity devices used in creating humorous effects in jokes and other humorous texts. These devices include the use of articles in plural and non-count nouns , coordinating conjunctions , the construction ' a little ' , devices affecting verbforms such as modals and tense shifting , in addition to other devices such as verb particles , idioms ...etc.
Ambiguity makes riddle, and linguistic humor possible. I will steal a taxonomy from Stageberg's excellent observations and extend them as we discover forms of ambiguity in Hebrew. Ambiguity is when there are two or more meanings.
Ambiguity
lexical
- "Lexical ambiguity occurs when two or more meanings of a single word or expression are applicable in a given context...Lexical ambiguity, then, derives from the meanings of words, not from their structures."
- Lexical-dictionary
- אמר means both 'said' or 'word' and 'lamb'. When God said: Let there be light, he created light by the lamb.
- Lexical-metaphor. The word is used as a metaphor causing ambiguity between the dictionary meaning and the metaphor.
- אור literally means light, but is a metaphor for holiness.
- Lexical-dictionary
- "Lexical ambiguity occurs when two or more meanings of a single word or expression are applicable in a given context...Lexical ambiguity, then, derives from the meanings of words, not from their structures."
structural
- "Structural ambiguity stems from the grammar of English, not from the different meaning of individual words"
- syntactic ambiguity
- "Syntactic ambiguity occurs when the arrangement of words in a grammatical structure permits two or more meanings to emerge."
- adjective+noun+noun
- present or past participle + noun
- a separable two-part verb or as a verb + preposition
- "Syntactic ambiguity occurs when the arrangement of words in a grammatical structure permits two or more meanings to emerge."
- syntactic ambiguity
- "Structural ambiguity stems from the grammar of English, not from the different meaning of individual words"
class
- "This occurs when a word can be classified as more than one part of speech in a given context."
vocal
- "The term vocal refers to the stresses, pitches, and pauses by means of which the human voice can control meanings and distinguish one meaning from another. "
contextual
- When the context is changed, ambiguity is made possible
- change in voice
- change in time
- change in presumed context
- ambiguous cause and effect
- When the context is changed, ambiguity is made possible
pseudo-ambiguity (pun)
- the use of a wrong word, permitting two interpretations—that of the word intended and that of the wrong word.