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Pooh-Bah
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Off-duty county deputy...June 17, 2005:
COMPTON (AP)-- An off-duty sheriff's deputy shot at robbers who took his wallet and held up a store at gunpoint Wednesday, authorities said
dalehileman
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Would Dale be obliquely commenting on the subject(s) of the verbal phrases in the cited sentence?
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Pooh-Bah
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He might indeed
He's a very oblique person
dalehileman
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Pooh-Bah
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I've been asked if there's a name for this kind of ambiguity, and I'd like to know too
dalehileman
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What's the ambiguity? Whether it's the sheriff or the deputy that's off duty?
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if that's it, I never even considered that the sheriff is off duty. there'd have to be some convoluted context for that to have much significance in a report of an incident.
I guess I'm admitting to not seeing any ambiguity in place one..
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Pooh-Bah
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Another correspondent admitted that he had to read it a half-dozen times before it dawned. Unfortunately, it loses its impact when you explain it:
An off-duty sheriff's deputy shot at robbers...and held up a store...
dalehileman
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Were they alive, my antecedents would have no problem with this, and I don't either. Those protesters who seek an anaphoric "who" after the word and are being just a tad picky.
TEd
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Quote:
… robbers who took his wallet and held up a store at gunpoint …
Seems pretty straight forward to me. Gotta twist and turn perty tortuously to make it ambiguous.
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All you need to do is diagram the sentence.
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[A] deputy of an off-duty sheriff shot at robbers who took the sherrif's wallet, and then held up a store [probably with the same weapon] Wednesday, someone in authority besides the sheriff said.  It is 'held up' that is ambiguous, since it does not vary with the subject being singular or plural.
ÅΓª╥┐↕§
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Quote:
It is 'held up' that is ambiguous, since it does not vary with the subject being singular or plural.
Nor does "took."
Naw, you've gotta work at it to misunderstand this sentence.
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stranger
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Agree.
The sentence is v. ambiguous.
As in, why did the deputy hold the store up at gunpoint after he was robbed?????
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[shakes head sadly and walks off into the sunset muttering something about prescrips sucking all the meaning out of language]
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I find the sentence not necessarily ambiguous (although it could be taken that way), but very strangely written. "The deputy of an off-duty sheriff" - what difference does it make if the sheriff was off- or on-duty? "...someone in authority besides the sheriff said." How about "a sheriff's department spokesperson said."?
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Quote:
… "The deputy of an off-duty sheriff" - what difference does it make if the sheriff was off- or on-duty?
Geez! That's why the interpretation that the sheriff was off-duty need not even be considered. There's such a thing as context in the English language.
All you have to do is read and understand the sentence. You don't have to set a bunch of hoops on fire so you can jump through them. Just read and understand the sentence.
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Geez (to borrow an expression  ), Faldage! It was *just a comment, unrelated to interpretation, but part of what struck me as "strangely written." I understood the sentence fine. Really. Next time I'll make the implicit explicit and say, "This is not exactly on point, but...I'm going to say it anyway!" 
Last edited by nancyk; 07/19/06 01:39 PM.
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Wull ... Except it wasn't the sheriff that was off duty. They said it because the deputy, the guy who shot at the robbers, that'd be the robbers who had taken his (the deputy's) wallet and who had held up the store at gunpoint, the deputy was off duty. And it's important to mention that he was off duty because that meant he was probably not in uniform when they (the robbers) took his wallet (but not, apparently, his gun).
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Some solipsistic hack probably made up the part about it being the sheriff who was off-duty anyway.
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What if one were to receive a notice for a Silent Cake Auction? He may answer, "I was really rather in the mood for a loud cake, but thanks just the same." 
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stranger
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Jay Leno frequently runs similar types of "abiguous statements" past his Tonight Show audience on Monday nights (the segment is known as "Headlines"). I'm getting better at spotting them right away thanks to my weekly 'practice'!
American English | Yooper | with a dash of Yiddish
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Surely you recall "the man who owned the lumber mill's daughter..."? That one's even older than I am!
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stranger
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I don't do much diagramming anymore. Is that why I fail to see any ambiguity here? It seems plain to me that the subject shot at an object who had done A and B. It also seems, as someone else has noted, that it would take very convoluted thinking to read it in any other way.
I read a headline at Crime Library's Daily Crime News within the last wek or so "Boyfriend fingers prostitute". Now that's ambiguous. Or is it ambidextrous?
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The deputy shot at the robbers. That much is clear even to those who would strain at gnats. The problem seems to be that some sre unsure whether it was the sheriff or the deputy that was off duty and whether it was the robbers or the deputy that held up the store at gunpoint. But I agree with you that it takes some real twisting and turning to misunderstand the sentence.
And welcome aBoard.
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