local vs global

local vs global

by Husam Jubran -
Number of replies: 3

Hey, I don't completely understand what is the difference between global structural ambiguities and local structural ambiguities, it would help me a lot if you can explain it to me,

Merci, 

Husam,


In reply to Husam Jubran

Re: local vs global

by Kalpani Anuradha Welivita -
According to my understanding, in the first example, it is ambiguous whether the word "Time" is a "noun" or a "verb". Depending on how we interpret "Time" (as a noun or a verb), the whole sentence will have two different syntactic interpretations. These types of ambiguities are called global structural ambiguities.

And in the second example, it is ambiguous whether the phrase "with a fork" is associated with the noun "fish" or with the action "ate". Depending on how we associate this phrase, only part of the resulting parse tree will change. These types of ambiguities are called local structural ambiguities.

I also found this Wikipedia page that contains some explanation to this: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Syntactic_ambiguity
In reply to Kalpani Anuradha Welivita

Re: local vs global

by Husam Jubran -
Thank you very much,
I have another question which is not related to the previous one, it is about Markov property, why is it possible to cross out T1 in the following question? Markov property work when there is no T4, why does it work also when there is T4? is there a mathematical proof for that?
also, if there was also T5 next to T4, will it be crossed out or not?

thanks in advance,
Husam,