An ambiguous sentence?

[Cifi]

• Why did Paul say he wouldn't be able to make it?

To me, this could mean either why he said it, or that he said why he wasn't able to make it, and I guess it would depend on context how it would be understood.

The Spanish translation is:

• ¿Por qué dijo Paul que no podría ir?

Does this have the same ambiguity?

[Julian_L.]

The sentence in Spanish is not ambiguous because it's specifically using the verb «ir» ("to go"), and the wording has only one interpretation.

• ¿Por qué dijo Paul que no podría ir? → Why did Paul say he/she wouldn't be able to go there?

[John238922]

Likewise the sentence in English is not ambiguous, because of the word order.

It seeks the reason why Paul said ...

[mention]Cifi[/mention] 's other construction would be

'Did Paul say why he wouldn't be able to make it?'

[Cifi]

@Cifi 's other construction would be

'Did Paul say why he wouldn't be able to make it?'

Thanks John! In the whole lesson they always put the question word first in English even though it logically seemed related to the subordinate clause. I'll see if I find that skill again.

[Cifi]

So, here is one of the other sentences:

• What time did they say intermission would be over? (A qué hora dijeron que acabaría el intermedio?)

To me, the inversed order as suggested by [mention]John238922[/mention]: Did they say what time intermission would be over? would be a different question, it is asking whether or not the information was given.

And I still feel there's ambiguity with What time did they say intermission would be over?

It may ask for the time they information is given (while possible, it seems less likely to me here though) or it asks for the time of the intermission.

[luo-ning]

Yeah I think it's one of those cases where context is much more important than analyzing the grammatical structure. The vast majority of people would understand it to refer to the time of the intermission, rather than the time of the utterance, because why would someone care about the time of the utterance?

If the question was being asked by a detective trying to learn the exact order of events and whether suspects had been consistent in what they had said or changed their stories, maybe they'd want to know the time of the utterance; but because that's such an unusual thing to ask, they'd have to phrase the question much more carefully to avoid being misunderstood. Something like: "At what time did they state the time at which the intermission would conclude?"

I guess (maybe [mention]Julian_L.[/mention] will correct me) that this is the same situation with the Spanish: grammatically, it could be either meaning, but in context it would only ever refer to the event rather than the utterance.

[John238922]

Going back to Paul, the Spanish for 'Did Paul say why ... ' would be '¿Dijo Paul por qué ... ?'

So its a similar word order to English.

In the 'What time did they say intermission would be over?' example, there's more potential for ambiguity because both the principal and subordinate clauses relate to time.

But I don't find it ambiguous, prolly for the reasons described by [mention]luo-ning[/mention].

If the question was phrased 'When did they say intermission would be over?' that would be moving more towards the 'When was the saying' meaning, but still not really there, again for [mention]luo-ning[/mention] 's reasons.

Rather clearer phrasings of the 'When was the saying' question would be 'When did they tell us/you ...' or 'When was [it] announced' or 'When did they actually say ... '.

[Cifi]

Just for the records: I think in my native language I'd use different word orders for the three cases:

Asking whether or not he said it:

Hat Paul gesagt, warum er nicht kommen kann?

(It would normally be understood that I want to know the reason, too, if the answer is positive.)

Asking for the reason why the information was given:

Warum hat Paul gesagt, dass er nicht kommen kann/könne?

(A situation to ask this might be that Paul actually did come in the end, and I wanted to know why he had said he would not.)

Asking for the reason why he isn't going to come (beware, I'm not sure about punctuation here):

Warum(,) hat Paul gesagt(,) kann er nicht kommen?