Eckhard Bick - VISL

Scope ambiguities, like the above type 3 example, are structural to such a
degree that they are very hard to tag on any word, even when using semantic tags.
Only global utterance context and full “knowledge of the world” allow to decide
whether the negation should be applied to the number of bottles, três, or the type of
beverage, vinho. Luckily, scope operators are often placed directly before the entity
they operate on:
(13a) Compre [ao menos @>A três] garrafas de vinho!
(13a) Compre [ao menos @>N [três garrafas]] de vinho!
Thus, in (13), ao=menos ('at least') can apply to either the numeral três, or the NP
três garrafas, and in either instance attachment structure would optimally have to be
tagged syntactically (@>A and @>N, respectively), mirroring semantic scope
structure.
In contrast to scope relations, the thematic role ambiguity of type 4 could
easily be explicited by word-based tags, - in the postnominal case by adding "clause
function" in the same way used for participle clauses, as in the following example of
“true” ambiguity (14):
(14a) o sacrifício da @N