Analysis / Ambiguous Syntax

In a most general sense, this trope is about poorly phrased sentences that have multiple meanings and cause confusion. However, there are different ways to create phrasal ambiguity. Here's a distinction between them:

• Syntactic ambiguity is when the multiple meanings comes from different grammar interpretations. For example, in this exchange:

Wesley: I'm a rogue demon hunter now.
Cordelia: Wow... so, what's a rogue demon?

— Angel, "Parting Gifts"

The humor comes from whether "rogue" describes the word "demon," or the word "hunter." None of those words change their meanings in either interpretation, only the grammatical grouping of the sentence.

• Lexical ambiguity is when the multiple meanings come from one or more words changing their definition. For example, look at this exchange:

Miles Standish: Give me the bird!
Yakko: We'd love to, really, but the FOX censors wouldn't allow it.

— Animaniacs, "Turkey Jerky"

In this case, the humor comes from whether the word "bird" means the animal or the gesture. There's no grammatical confusion, only which synonym they are referring to.

While this distinction isn't needed to add examples to the trope page, a little linguistics can be helpful to understand exactly what makes various cases of wordplay work.

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