Spring, 2001 Psy 310-810 Ambiguity example

Ambiguity Example

1a) The cow that the farmer expected to eat was purple with rage.
1b) The cow that the farmer expected to eat old grass was purple with rage.

The two alternatives deal with the subject NP and the object NP of eat.

cow eat X

farmer eat cow

This ambiguity is from the interaction of

infinitive complements
relative clause formation and
the intransitiveness of verbs like eat which don't require explicit objects.

Thus, look at the unambigous sentence 1b. There is something about old grass.

The listener's task is (in part) to ascertain the structure of the utterance including the role of the coreferential NP in the relative clause (now the relative pronoun). What is the source of the pronoun?

In 1b there is only one choice, old grass is present as the object. But in 1a there is no object of eat present, one is not required. Thus there are two structural options available as the source of the relative pronoun.

If you select the first (?) NP as the source of the relative pronoun, then you interpret it as

expected the cow to eat (something)

and you don't need to worry about the second (?) NP since eat doesn't need one.

If you select the second (?) NP you get

the farmer expected to eat the cow

and you are not worried about the first (?) NP, which is required for eat because you know about infinitive complements and in particular you know that expect will permit the listener to use its subject (farmer) as the subject of eat.

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Ambiguity Example

1a) The cow that the farmer expected to eat was purple with rage. 1b) The cow that the farmer expected to eat old grass was purple with rage.

expected the cow to eat (something)

the farmer expected to eat the cow

1a) The cow that the farmer expected to eat was purple with rage.
1b) The cow that the farmer expected to eat old grass was purple with rage.