Abstract
This study aims at finding out lexical and structural ambiguity which occurs in the articles and explaining the causal factors in each ambiguity. The data in this study were taken from nineteen articles in The Jakarta Post daily newspaper from edition November 14 to November 25, 2017. Recording method and note taking technique were applied in this study for collecting the data. Meanwhile, the data were analyzed using qualitative method. Ulmann’s theories that involved kinds of ambiguity and the causal factors of ambiguity, by using Macmillan Dictionary to find the definition of each word in lexical ambiguity and labeled and bracketed sentences/phrases proposed by Yule were used to analyze the data. The result of the analysis shows that there were 20 ambiguous words, phrases or/and sentences found in nineteen articles in The Jakarta Post. There were 8 cases of lexical ambiguities and 12 cases of structural ambiguities. The result of this study shows the causal factors of each ambiguity as well, there were 8 lexical ambiguities caused by polysemy and 12 structural ambiguities caused by equivocal phrasing.
Highlights
Introduction to the Science of MeaningOxford: Basil Blachwell.Ullmann, Stephen. 1977
If lexical ambiguity is caused by a word with more than one meaning, structural ambiguity is caused by the structure of the words when they are combined even though those words exactly have only one meaning
There are two kinds of ambiguity found in nineteen articles in The Jakarta Post Daily Newspaper; lexical ambiguity and structural ambiguity
Summary
Introduction to the Science of MeaningOxford: Basil Blachwell.Ullmann, Stephen. 1977. Semantics: An Introduction to the Science of Meaning. According to Fromkin Rodman (1983:169), “A word or a sentence is ambiguous if it can be understood or interpreted in more than one way.”. It is a term which is against meaning properties of a language because it refers to an utterance (a word, a phrase, or a sentence) that has more than one meaning. As Leech (1981:30) says “An expression is said to be ambiguous when more than one interpretation can be assigned to it.” This ambiguous expression can happen in one word or one sentence/phrase. If lexical ambiguity is caused by a word with more than one meaning, structural ambiguity is caused by the structure of the words when they are combined even though those words exactly have only one meaning
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