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In mathematics and logic, ambiguity can be considered to be an instance of the logical concept of underdetermination—for example, = leaves open what the value of is—while overdetermination, except when like =, =, =, is a self-contradiction, also called inconsistency, paradoxicalness, or oxymoron, or in mathematics an inconsistent system ...
Seven Types of Ambiguity ushered in New Criticism in the United States. The book is a guide to a style of literary criticism practiced by Empson. An ambiguity is represented as a puzzle to Empson. We have ambiguity when "alternative views might be taken without sheer misreading." Empson reads poetry as an exploration of conflicts within the author.
Empson's best-known work is the book Seven Types of Ambiguity, which, together with Some Versions of Pastoral and The Structure of Complex Words, mines the astonishing riches of linguistic ambiguity in English poetic literature. Empson's studies unearth layer upon layer of irony, suggestion and argumentation in various literary works, applying ...
The sentence "time flies like an arrow" is in fact often used to illustrate syntactic ambiguity. [1] Modern English speakers understand the sentence to unambiguously mean "Time passes fast, as fast as an arrow travels". But the sentence is syntactically ambiguous and alternatively could be interpreted as meaning, for example: [2]
Pathetic fallacy (also known as anthropomorphic fallacy or anthropomorphization) is a specific type [dubious – discuss] of reification. Just as reification is the attribution of concrete characteristics to an abstract idea, a pathetic fallacy is committed when those characteristics are specifically human characteristics, especially thoughts or feelings. [13]
Indeterminacy in literature is a situation in which components of a text require the reader to make their own decisions about the text's meaning. (Baldick 2008) This can occur if the text's ending does not provide full closure and there are still questions to be answered, or when "the language is such that the author’s original intention is not known".
Equivocation in a syllogism (a chain of reasoning) produces a fallacy of four terms (quaternio terminorum).Below is an example: Since only man [human] is rational. And no woman is a man [male].
Tolkien's ambiguity, in his Middle-earth fiction, in his literary analysis of fantasy, and in his personal statements about his fantasy, has attracted the attention of critics, who have drawn conflicting conclusions about his intentions and the quality of his work, and of scholars, who have examined the nature of that ambiguity.