An Analysis of Sentence Ambiguity found in the Students reading ’English Textbook “Bahasa Inggris SMA/MA/SMK/MAK Kelas XI Semester 1

Abstract

In English language, a word, a phrase or a sentence sometimes have more than one meaning which is called ambiguity. The objective of this research is to find the types of ambiguity sentences and the most dominant of ambiguity. The researcher analyzes the structural ambiguity and the lexical ambiguity in textbook “Bahasa Inggris SMA/MA/SMK/MAK Kelas XI Semester 1”. The researcher uses descriptive qualitative method for this thesis because the data produced are in the forms of word rather than number. The researcher takes some words, phrases and sentences from the textbook and analyzes which one that follows the syntactic ambiguity and semantic ambiguity. The result of the research is found 33 data of ambiguity. The structural ambiguity represents about 33.3%. It is included noun phrase 1.0%. While the lexical ambiguity represents about 66,7%. It is included noun 41.8%, verb 29.1% and adjective 29.1%. it means mostly lexical ambiguity happen in word noun. Furthermore, the researcher can get the conclusion the most dominant ambiguity is lexical ambiguity that is 66,7%. The researcher suggests to other researcher better to use tree diagram that labellled bracket in analyzing ambiguity. Analyzing the sentence structure by using tree diagram will give clearer explanation than using labelled bracket.