Talk:Amphibology

Almost only examples
This article, as it stands, has almost no explaining text. It deals exclusively in examples, and these do not come with explanations. I have no trouble understanding their meaning, but I think many people with English as their second language may have some difficulty getting their meaning. The bit about tourists and the "dogs must be carried" sign illustrates my point, I think. Also, stuff like when this was coined, by who, etc. should be added to a history section. Zuiram 11:35, 22 November 2006 (UTC)

--an alternative meaning of the term-- There is another usage of "amphibology". It occurs in several places in the writings of Emmanuel Levinas. As distinguished from ambiguity or equivocation, Levinas uses the term to refer to a word or phrase that has two competing meanings, both of which are equally true. Thus, for instance, "possession of consciousness" means at one and the same time that I possess consciousness and that I am possessed by consciousness -- i.e., that it is a boundary for me. Both are true at the same time. —Preceding unsigned comment added by Mgillick (talk • contribs) 15:21, 29 March 2009 (UTC)

Confusing Example
Here is the explanation behind 'dogs must be carried' reference:

I'm afraid it still gives me some amusement to see the "Dogs must be carried" sign at the bottom of escalators as I do think that there will be a number of confused tourists wondering where they're going to get a dog so that they can travel up the escalator. .......... doh!!!! -

?? Dogs must be carried ?? I DONT GET IT EITHER!! I feel strange that I dont have a clue!!! ? - The example from Henry VI only says that "Amphiboly occurs frequently in poetry, owing to the alteration of the natural order of words for metrical reasons" -- it doesn't explain the dual meaning as the rest do. I don't get this one...could somebody add an explanation please? (Both for consistency's sake and for the edification of my curiosity.) TIA! 174.111.242.35 (talk) 06:31, 14 May 2011 (UTC)
 * "Dogs must be carried." (sign on the escalators of the London Underground) - I don't get it.
 * Plus, we might want to organize the examples, since right now the structure is: 1) an example. 2) "A better example might be..." 3) A list of examples.Lackthereof 23:34, 21 August 2006 (UTC)

Marlowe example
The equivocation supposedly evident in the example by Edward Marlowe is lost on me, since I, like the vast majority of native English-speakers, do not understand Latin. A translation and explanation by someone more knowledgeable on Latin is probably in order. —Bpogi (talk) 02:24, 18 December 2009 (UTC)

Employees must wash hands
Could be taken to mean either that the employees must wash their own hands, or that they must wash ALL hands. Someone seeing that in a public restroom and reading it in the most literal sense might falsely conclude that they needed to wait for an employee to show up if they wanted their hands washed. Lurlock (talk) 23:38, 10 September 2010 (UTC)

Two sentences referred to as one... Edit.
"  Teenagers shouldn't be allowed to drive. It's getting too dangerous on the streets.

This sentence could be taken to mean the teenagers will be in danger, or that they will cause the danger."

There are clearly TWO sentences there, as there are TWO capitalisations and TWO fullstops respective of each sentence. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 86.14.104.138 (talk) 00:09, 30 March 2011 (UTC)

Is this article remotely accurate?
It depends on a single source, which I have not consulted.

But the article is apparently about every single type of ambiguity in language. If that's what 'amphiboly' means, we should just redirect to the 'ambiguity' page.

My understanding is that amphibolies are a special kind of ambiguity which arise from ambiguous parsing. For instance,

"John is married, and Mary is single, or Joe is crazy"

can mean that John is married and either Mary is single or Joe is crazy, or else it can mean that either both John is married and Mary is single, or else Joe is crazy.

This is backed up here:

http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/logic-classical/ — Preceding unsigned comment added by 86.130.116.161 (talk) 00:59, 6 September 2013 (UTC)


 * As near as I can tell, amphibology is a synonym of syntactic ambiguity, particularly in academic circles:   , plus the Stanford site you mentioned. For this reason I have merged the content of this article into Syntactic ambiguity and Mental reservation and redirected the page to Syntactic ambiguity. —Remember the dot (talk) 07:32, 3 October 2013 (UTC)