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Ask-A-Linguist - Message details
Subject: Ambiguous sentence?
Question:
Hi!

I have the sentence: I want one of the candies that is/are red. I read it with 'is', others with 'are'. My reason is that [CP [C of] [DP [D the] [NP [candies]]]] adjoins to N' of 'one' to form 'one of the candies'. This would preclude 'candies' as an antecedent of 'that', as there would not be a c-command relation. This begs the question, how is the sentence derived. I assumed it starts 'one is red', with the trace of one being spelt out as 'that' in PF.

I would be very grateful for your opinion.

Thanks in advance,

Peter

Reply:
To go along with what my colleagues are saying, I don't believe this is a syntactically
ambiguous sentence (same string, two possible trees) because trees will essentially
be the same.

That is, an NP [one of the candies] is the item that has been raised out of the clause
leaving a trace behind in the relative clause.

Instead this appears to be a quantifier interpretation issue, and that is usually the
realm of semantic interpretation or LF (logical form) interpretation and that is usually
covered in a more advanced syntax course.

Dr. Lawler did a good job explaining the two scenarios in everyday English, but they
can be semantically diagrammed in different ways depending on your intended
meaning. If you are interested, you can read about quantifiers and semantics,
especially the universal (∀) and the existential (∃).

Lots of these sentences occur, but often real world expectations tend to result in one
interpretation over another. But here both scenarios seem reasonable, so both
sentences sound "OK" depending on context.

Reply From: Elizabeth J Pyatt    click here to access email
Date: Sep-04-2009
Other Replies:
  1. Re: Ambiguous sentence? Susan Fischer    (Sep-03-2009)
  2. Re: Ambiguous sentence? John M. Lawler    (Sep-03-2009)
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