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Literary Term of Alvelor PDF
Literary Term of Alvelor PDF
alternative set A term used in relation to the semantics of focus for the set
of items with which the denotation of a focused constituent contrasts. For
example, in the sentence It was Mary who arrived late, the alternative set for
Mary would include individuals other than Mary whom one might have
expected would arrive late, but did not.
ambiguity (n.) The general sense of this term, referring to a word or sentence
which expresses more than one meaning (is ambiguous), is found in linguis-
tics, but several types of ambiguity are recognized. The most widely discussed
type is grammatical (or structural) ambiguity. In phrase-structure ambiguity,
alternative constituent structures can be assigned to a construction, as
in new houses and shops, which could be analysed either as new [houses and
shops] (i.e. both are new) or [new houses] and shops (i.e. only the houses
are new). In transformational ambiguity, the sentence may have a similar