Re: THEORY: Adpositional Heads

IZ = Isidora Zamora
CW = Christopher Wright

IZ> I was basing what I said on what I have been teaching my daughter about
IZ> (English) sentence diagramming from a textbook on diagramming.

CW> Don't trust those. They lie to make things easier to learn. Though the
CW> lies can be safely applied, they aren't any truer for that.

In what way do sentence diagramming rules lie?  They are certainly
a valuable tool for learning English grammar.

IZ> Now that I look at the example sentence more carefully, though, I can see
IZ> that there is, in fact, an ambiguity as to whether I [saw in the house] a
IZ> man or whether it was [a man in the house] that I saw.

Even [I in the house] saw a man is a possible, though unlikely,
interpretation.

CW> You can easily disambiguate (ooh! a new word)
??

In what sense is "disambiguate" a new word?  In the grand scheme of
things, I suppose it's relatively new, since it's first attested in
1963 . . . but since that's before I was born, and I've been running
across the word most of my life, it sure doesn't feel new to me. :)

-Mark

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