Editing Syntactic ambiguity (section)

{{Redirect-distinguish2|Structural ambiguity|the ambiguity of [[Ambiguity#Biology|protein structures]]}}
{{Redirect-distinguish2|Amphibology|amphibiology, the study of [[amphibian]]s}}
{{Short description|Sentences with structures permitting multiple possible interpretations}}
'''Syntactic ambiguity''', also known as '''structural ambiguity''',<ref name="Dallin"/> '''amphiboly''', or '''amphibology''', is characterized by the potential for a [[Sentence (linguistics)|sentence]] to yield multiple interpretations due to its ambiguous [[Syntax (linguistics)|syntax]]. This form of ambiguity is not derived from the varied [[polysemy|meanings of individual words]] but rather from the relationships among words and clauses within a sentence, concealing interpretations beneath the [[word order]]. Consequently, a sentence presents as syntactically ambiguous when it permits reasonable derivation of several possible grammatical structures by an observer.

In [[jurisprudence]], the interpretation of syntactically ambiguous phrases in statutory texts or [[contracts]] may be done by courts. Occasionally, claims based on highly improbable interpretations of such ambiguities are dismissed as being [[frivolous litigation]] and without merit.{{citation needed|date=January 2018}} The term ''parse forest'' refers to the collection of all possible syntactic structures, known as ''[[Parse tree|parse trees]]'', that can represent the ambiguous sentence's meanings.<ref>Billot, Sylvie, and Bernard Lang. "[https://hal.inria.fr/inria-00075520/document The structure of shared forests in ambiguous parsing]." Proceedings of the 27th annual meeting on Association for Computational Linguistics. Association for Computational Linguistics, 1989.</ref><ref>Kurohashi, Sadao, and Makoto Nagao. "[https://web.archive.org/web/20180128132616/https://pdfs.semanticscholar.org/8ce8/85854b25fa93bdf2106f09f15e6912380fc1.pdf Building a Japanese parsed corpus while improving the parsing system]." Proceedings of The 1st International Conference on Language Resources & Evaluation. 1998.</ref> The task of clarifying which meaning is actually intended from among the possibilities is known as ''syntactic disambiguation''.<ref>MacDonald, Maryellen C., Neal J. Pearlmutter, and Mark S. Seidenberg. "[http://old.nbu.bg/cogs/events/2004/materials/Fernanda/MPS%20Psych%20Review%20Vol%20101%20No%204.pdf The lexical nature of syntactic ambiguity resolution] {{Webarchive|url=https://web.archive.org/web/20160803142426/http://old.nbu.bg/cogs/events/2004/materials/Fernanda/MPS%20Psych%20Review%20Vol%20101%20No%204.pdf |date=2016-08-03 }}." Psychological review 101.4 (1994): 676.</ref>