In every human language we can find individual expressions that have two or more distinct meanings. A lot of jokes and riddles, particularly those targeted at elementary school-aged children, are based on ambiguity. Ambiguity occurs at several linguistic levels, whether it is structural, lexical, morphological, or phonological. Another type of ambiguity, Use vs. mention, is more difficult to come across than the others, but does have some entertainment value. In a structurally ambiguous sentence, the interpretation of constituents is unclear. One morning I shot an elephant in my pajamas. How he got in my pajamas, I'll never know. But then we tried to get his tusks off, which was very difficult. Of course in Alabama, the Tuscaloosa... But that's entirely irrelephant to what I was talking about... – Groucho Marx In this famous comedy monologue, no word is ambiguous, but “shot an elephant in my pajamas” could have two different structures, which could confuse listeners. Here, the listener hears a prepositional phase [in my shorts] modifies the noun phrase [I].
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