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The aforementioned sentence arises in an assignment of the course Introduction to Mathematical Thinking, where the notion of literary ambiguity is made explicit in our everyday use of language. However, unlike with the sentence "No head injury is too trivial to ignore"(which, to my surprise, has already been asked about on English.SE), I cannot figure out any ambiguity with the current phrasing of the sentence. The answer seeks two ambiguous interpretations which deviate from the originally intended meaning, and I would like this dilemma to be resolved.

(Further tags may be added as deemed suitable, I can only call this a simple case of ambiguity for now)

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    I too fail to see any ambiguity in that sentence. The only meaning I can construe is "If there's a fire, don't use the elevator."
    – Robusto
    Commented Jul 24, 2020 at 12:30
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    The supposed "ambiguity" is Don't use the elevator in case doing so causes a fire, but that's such a perverse interpretation and so non-idiomatically phrased I don't really see the point in bringing it up.
    – FumbleFingers
    Commented Jul 24, 2020 at 12:33
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    @FumbleFingers: I still can't wrap my mind around that. To me it would require some mention of causality to get to that interpretation, and even if you have that any ambiguity will in any case have been eliminated. Perhaps I'm too used to seeing that warning in, oh, every public building I've ever been in that has an elevator.
    – Robusto
    Commented Jul 24, 2020 at 13:28
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    Mathematically the statement seems to boil down to if fire no elevator which is not ambiguous either.
    – Robusto
    Commented Jul 24, 2020 at 13:38
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    “This elevator” suggests it might be okay to use the other elevator, which would be wrong. Most sentences are ambiguous if you stretch assumptions enough, but at least on signs you want messages quickly read, perhaps by NNSs, and quickly understood as you want them to be.
    – Xanne
    Commented Jul 24, 2020 at 21:10

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Consider "in case of accidents, don't drive too fast". In that case it's clear that not driving too fast is to avoid accidents (though clearly driving fast near them isn't a great idea either).

The alternative meaning in your example is "to avoid fires, don't use the elevator". That's nonsensical, so there's no everyday ambiguity and we all understand "if there's a fire, don't use the elevator"

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  • That's one possibility, but the question seeks two such ambiguous interpretations.
    – Manan
    Commented Jul 24, 2020 at 12:36
  • It's only a hypothetical "alternative meaning". In practice OP's phrasing would never be used by a native speaker to convey the sense given here. So asking for two "alternative meanings" just seems utterly pointless, since even the most obvious "alternative" would never actually "exist" in the real world.
    – FumbleFingers
    Commented Jul 24, 2020 at 12:38
  • @FumbleFingers Aah...the real world aspect. Perhaps that's the point of the question itself, and the very reason why the question isn't best suited to English.SE :) Maybe I'll ask on Math.SE
    – Manan
    Commented Jul 24, 2020 at 12:42
  • I think that's also pointless. Whether you aski here or on Math.SE, the problem is you're trying to treat natural language on a par with computer code. The former is often deliberately shaped in favour of ambiguity (which is an essential characteristic of all natural languages), but obviously one of the fundamental requirements of a computer language is that the "meaning" should be 100% fixed - fully defined and unambiguous.
    – FumbleFingers
    Commented Jul 24, 2020 at 12:54
  • @FumbleFingers Consider the phrasing: "Do not use this elevator in case a fire breaks out in this building"- the point I'm making about is specification of the entity corresponding to that particular case. In the real world, a human would unambiguously deduce the meaning from context, but an abstraction requires the domain of discourse be specified.
    – Manan
    Commented Jul 24, 2020 at 13:01

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