Sentence Construction – Ambiguity in ‘His Son Killed His Mother’ Explained

ambiguitysentence-construction

Consider that Alex is the son of Bob. Alex's mother (wife of Bob) is Caren and the grandmother of Alex (mother of Bob) is Deb.

Now Alex (son of Bob) killed Deb (mother of Bob), if I want to say that Bob's son killed Bob's mother [Alex killed his own grandmother], I would probably say (suppose I am telling this to someone who knows Alex, Bob, Caren and Deb and I don't need to repeat their original names)

His (Bob's) son killed his mother

This sentence sounds very ambiguous to me. It can have two interpretations:

  1. His son (Bob's son) killed Caren (Bob's wife)
  2. His son killed Deb (Bob's mother)

Is my original sentence ambiguous? How do I remove this ambiguity from the sentence?

Best Answer

The ambiguity in "his son killed his mother" comes from who each use of 'his' refers to.

There are any number of ways you could remove the ambiguity, but the two most obvious to me that keep broadly the same sentence structure are:

  1. Whatever comes after the word "killed" defines who was killed by the son, so make that more specfic:

"His son killed his own paternal grandmother"

  1. Re-order the sentence so that each use of "his" can only refer to the same person (it cannot refer to the grandmother as she is a woman):

His mother was killed by his son.

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