I have come across the following sentences in a study material supplied by The English and foreign languages University:
She loves her dog more than her husband.
They are flying saucers
They are entertaining girls
I have some questions regarding these sentences. We can analyse the sentences and explain the ambiguity.
But can people interpret these sentences in two different ways?
Do native speakers and non-native speakers of English understand these sentences in the same way?
All three sentences, as they stand, are ambiguous.
1. She loves her dog more than her husband.
2. They are flying saucers.
3. They are entertaining girls.
The only way to tell for certain which meaning is actually meant is either through more explicit phrasing or through context that makes it obvious.
In reality, however, most people would assume the second sentence to have the second meanings—simply because that's the meaning most commonly conveyed. The third sentence is less obvious, as each meaning is used on occasion. And the first depends on how cynical you might be—although some people might think that the first meaning is quite possible.
In almost any actual conversation, or any descriptive passage in a book, there would be the context needed to make the meaning obvious. These kind of sentences very rarely appear completely on their own—either in text or dialogue.
A person's first interpretation of such a sentence depends solely upon his or her thought process. "She loves her dog more than her husband" is elliptically ambiguous, wherefore such constructions are uncommon (if not obsolete) in good writing; "They are flying saucers" is ambiguous, for it is confusing whether the pronoun "they" refers to the flying saucers or to the people flying them; and "They are entertaining girls" is ambiguous, for it is confusing whether the pronoun "they" refers to the entertaining girls or to whoever is entertaining them.
