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John killed David in his car.

Who owned the car?

In other words, which antecedent does the pronoun "his" refer to? John or David?

Or you think this this sentence is actually so ambiguous that it must be rewritten?

If so, and assuming John does own the car, how would you rewrite the sentence?

leeyuiwah
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    There are a lot of similar questions like this one about "We gave the bananas to the monkeys because they were hungry/ripe" or on "dogs hate cats because they are naughty". To sum up, ambiguous. – Stuart F Jan 19 '24 at 15:15
  • @StuartF -- Thanks! I also think it is ambiguous but some of my friends (including native English speakers and people with very advanced level of English proficiency) think David owned the car (reason: the pronoun refers to the closest antecedent). Also, I am interested in knowning how to rewrite this sentence (assuming that John does own the car). – leeyuiwah Jan 19 '24 at 15:19
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    Often, you might see: John killed David in his, David's, car. – Lambie Jan 19 '24 at 15:40
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    There seems to be no possibility to say that without ambiguity and as concisely; here is one, but it involves the passive voice: "David, while in John's car, was killed by him.". – LPH Jan 19 '24 at 15:41
  • I came up with this one -- "John killed David in John's car." It is clunky but I could not come up with a better one. – leeyuiwah Jan 19 '24 at 15:44
  • @LPH Wrong, in cases like this we repeat the person's name. – Lambie Jan 19 '24 at 15:51
  • OP's "so ambiguous that it must be rewritten" displays a lack of understanding of how language normally works. Most utterances are capable of carrying multiple different meanings, but in practice any ambiguity is usually "hypothetical / pedantic" - context nearly always makes it obvious which interpretation to apply in any given case. It's pointless using "context-less" examples on a site like this to justify completely unnecessary "disambiguation". – FumbleFingers Jan 19 '24 at 16:49
  • @FumbleFingers The word "so" in the sentence was not mine but added by a community editor. If you can access edit history you can see the change #2 there. – leeyuiwah Jan 19 '24 at 17:46
  • That slight change to your original phrasing doesn't really affect the meaning - or if it does, I'd say your original version more strongly conveys the mistaken idea that *any* level of ambiguity (not just utterances that are *so ambiguous) requires a rewrite. The reality is it's almost impossible to present an utterance in written form online as a useful "example of ambiguity" that needs to be changed, because in the real world the full* context nearly always resolves any ambiguity. You get a misleading impression from "reduced context" text-only examples online. – FumbleFingers Jan 19 '24 at 18:08
  • @Lambie: Most of the Google Books matches for *his john's house* are this same basic construction. But they usually set off the "disambiguating" proper noun in brackets (round or square), rather than commas. – FumbleFingers Jan 19 '24 at 18:20
  • @FumbleFingers Well, yes, except not in a dialogue. I use brackets in a description...//Please go check out was stood versus was standing on ELL. I swear I must be the only American with open ears. I've been to England three times, only not recently and was raised with all Brits, But still my ears are open re series and movies. Whatever is the matter with these people? Even though the US is huge, not huge numbers hear much BrE or even take note of it in books. – Lambie Jan 19 '24 at 18:49
  • @Lambie: I was a bit surprised to see that most of the brackets in the results from my Google Books search were *square* brackets. Which are usually used to set off a writer's additional text within quoted material. Perhaps that's because in its original context there was little or no ambiguity, but in the more restricted context of a later citation, disambiguation becomes more necessary. If so, that would be in line with my assertion that in practice, English utterances are nowhere near as ambiguous as you might think if all you read were ELL posts! – FumbleFingers Jan 19 '24 at 18:56
  • @FumbleFingers Yeah, square brackets is weird to me too. On the other hand, would one use brackets at all in dialogue? I don't think so. – Lambie Jan 19 '24 at 19:12
  • This is certainly a duplicate. What is the right way to avoid antecedent ambiguity? shows pronoun-antecedent ambiguity ('He worked in three other films by Quentin Tarantino in his early days. '). // 'John killed David in his (David's) car.' – Edwin Ashworth Jan 19 '24 at 19:25
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    @leeyuiwah There's a lot of English comedy that depends on exactly this kind of ambiguous phrasing to set up wordplay, where the context suggests that the phrase should be understood one way, and then the speaker's next line reveals it's actually more absurd interpretation. The famous Groucho Marx bit that Fumblefingers linked to is a perfect example. – Darth Pseudonym Jan 19 '24 at 21:46

1 Answers1

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Who owned the car?

There is absolutely no way to say. Yes, this sentence is ambiguous. But it's also taken out of context. It's been presented here as an example; in real life, we seldom communicate a single sentence out of context. (If we did—say, in a careless tweet—then confusion and misunderstanding might happen and the speaker would be asked to clarify.) In most real-world situations, other sentences before or after might make this one clear. And yes, even if they do, it's a good idea to rewrite this one.

There are many options for a rewrite. The simplest might be to simply replace "his" with one of the names, even if this sounds repetitive: "John killed David in David's car." This doesn't sound so bad when the sentence is longer, and repeating the noun like this can often be a good solution. E.g. "The publishers Random House and Penguin resolved their dispute on Thursday about whether Penguin's [rather than "their"] edition of 1984 was in violation of copyright."

There are probably also dozens of ways of recasting the language to avoid both ambiguity and such close repetition, perhaps working in some more details of the story that would doubtless be found in nearby sentences. Like "David was killed last night in his own car. The perpetrator, John, forced entry..."

Andy Bonner
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