Comments on: More Syntactic Ambiguity http://www.adamsdrafting.com/2009/11/13/more-syntactic-ambiguity/ Tue, 31 Jan 2012 01:23:03 +0000 hourly 1 http://wordpress.org/?v=abc By: Neal Goldfarb http://www.adamsdrafting.com/2009/11/13/more-syntactic-ambiguity/comment-page-1/#comment-93794 Neal Goldfarb Fri, 04 Dec 2009 05:22:29 +0000 http://www.adamsdrafting.com/?p=1878#comment-93794 Despite what the Tenth Circuit thinks, The ambiguity in this case has nothing to do with modifiers or modification. Rather, it relates to whether a list of items in the contract was recursive -- i.e., whether it was a simple list (as in example 1) or a list that had a list embedded in it (as in example 2). 1. A or B or C or anything similar. 2. A or B or (C or anything similar). Because the ambiguity has nothing to do with modification, the court is way off base when it invokes the rule of the last antecedent. As it is when it describes the Groucho Marx "elephant in my pajamas" line as ungrammatical. Despite what the Tenth Circuit thinks, The ambiguity in this case has nothing to do with modifiers or modification. Rather, it relates to whether a list of items in the contract was recursive — i.e., whether it was a simple list (as in example 1) or a list that had a list embedded in it (as in example 2).

1. A or B or C or anything similar.
2. A or B or (C or anything similar).

Because the ambiguity has nothing to do with modification, the court is way off base when it invokes the rule of the last antecedent. As it is when it describes the Groucho Marx “elephant in my pajamas” line as ungrammatical.

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