First year students’ interpretation and structure of ambiguous english sentences

Filipinos, who are fond of using English, generally do not use the language in a way native English speakers do. Thus, there are more possibilities of erroneous message transmission and/or misconception of the meaning intended by the speaker or source. This study sought answers to the following questions: What are the preferential interpretation and structure of students under global ambiguity and garden path? Do the students derive an interpretation from sentences under local ambiguity? This qualitative research involved 117 students of the Cagayan State University. The data were gathered by letting them give their interpretation of sentences with structural ambiguity. For global ambiguity, students have a higher tendency of interpreting an-ing form of verb as a participle or a modifier, especially when it is placed at the beginning of a sentence and when it has a dual role-either participle or gerund. Though they have high tendency of interpreting sentences based on the S-V pattern, they do not necessarily always interpret them as such; instead, they still have a high tendency of considering an-ing form of verb as a participle or modifier. They base their interpretation not only to the structure of the sentence but also to the most plausible meaning and to low attachment. They have high tendency of not being able to build an interpretation in locally ambiguous sentences.