Structural Ambiguity in Russian Humor Creation

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1 Scopus citations

Abstract

The present paper investigates the impact of structural ambiguity on humor creation in Russian. A range of jokes is analyzed which are based on the possibility of assigning two distinct structures to the same sentence, which, in turn, results in the emergence of two opposed scripts / scenarios / readings, as is necessary for the creation of a humorous effect. We consider several types of structural ambiguity, as well as the ways in which they interact with additional linguistic phenomena, such as homonymy, polysemy and the complement / adjunct distinction.

Original languageEnglish
Pages (from-to)1-10
Number of pages10
JournalRussian Linguistics
Volume40
Issue number1
DOIs
StatePublished - 1 Apr 2016

ASJC Scopus subject areas

  • Language and Linguistics
  • Developmental and Educational Psychology
  • Linguistics and Language

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