Literary Discourse in America: Syntactic Ambiguity 

The Author

Introduction
In a caption of a news story, a leading international TV network writes the following sentence:

● 'Trump says "we should unify" at a rally.'

While the contents of the sentence might be useful to the American Society of racial diversity, the wording is injurious to syntactic normalcy. In fact, the structure contains a portion of Lexical Ambiguity. Before we come to the analysis and correction, we need to revise our notes on Ambiguity.

Ambiguity simply means lack of clarity in construction - written or spoken. This occurs when there are two or more meanings in a passage. Ambiguity is of two basic types: Syntactic Ambiguity and Lexical Ambiguity.

Syntactic Ambiguity
This is the presence of two or more meanings occasioned by the positioning of a word or phrase within a construction. Syntactic Ambiguity is also known as Structural Ambiguity or Grammatical Ambiguity.

Analysis
In view of the above explanation, it is clear that the ambiguity is caused by the positioning of the adverbial phrase of place "at a rally." To understand the ambiguity in question very well, let us consider the following questions:

● 'Trump says "we should unify" at a rally.'

● Is it that Trump talks about the unification AT A RALLY?

OR
● Does Trump suggest that the unification should be done AT A RALLY?

The following pair of questions further exposes the ambiguity:

● Is it the saying of Trump which has been done AT A RALLY?

OR
● Trump's suggested unification which should be done AT A RALLY?

Obviously, the answer to any of these questions could be right, but might not be intended. For that matter, ambiguity exists in the sentence structure.

Correction
The ambiguous sentence could be corrected in a number of ways. Below are some of them:

● Speaking AT A RALLY, Trump says "we should unify."

In this structure, the adverbial phrase of place "at a rally" clearly modifies the verb "speaking."

● Trump says AT A RALLY (that) "we should unify."
In this structure, "at a rally" - as an adverbial phrase of place - clearly modifies the verb "says" by virtue of the Principle of Proximity (closeness).

● Trump says we should unify.
In this structure, the adverbial phrase "at a rally" is avoided to prevent ambiguity.

Conclusion
Dear reader, ambiguity may sound simple, but it constitutes a major source of miscommunication. Knowledge of it is NOT enough. An amalgamation of knowledge and care is, therefore, a critical recommendation to avoid the linguistic misdemeanor.

Allah is The Best Linguist.
Dr. Abubakar Mohammed Marzuq Azindoo
Lecturer, University of Applied Management - Ghana Campus, McCarthy Hill, Accra.