Syntactic Ambiguity of Arabic Prepositional Phrase Attachment in Saudi Newspaper Headlines

Abstract

In this article, an attempt is made to analyze syntactic ambiguity in a specific register, i.e. newspaper headlines. As a form of media text, newspaper has a significant role in society as it presents various local, national and international events and information. In order to attract readers' attention, journalists may tend to form headlines to be ambiguous and confusing so that readers become curious to read the whole report. This article addresses the issue of syntactic ambiguity caused by prepositional phrase (PP) attachment in newspaper headlines by analyzing examples of such headlines. After investigating the ambiguity of the headlines, an attention was directed to PP attachment preferences by examining the type of headlines (VP-NP-PP and NP1-NP2-PP structure). The main results were that NP attachment was generally preferred over VP attachment and NP1 attachment was notably favored over NP2 attachment.