A Semantic Analysis of Syntactic Ambiguity in Sentences produced by The Eighth Semester Students of English Education Department of IAIN Salatiga in the Academic Year of 2015/2016

The goals of this research are to know what are the causes of syntactic ambiguity produced by students and the most dominant cause of the most frequent ambiguity produced. This research is a descriptive-qualitative with data presented in quantitative way. The object of this research is Syntactic Ambiguity in Sentences produced by 30 students of English Education Department in the eighth semester. The data were collected using a questionnaire containing 10 sentences. The findings of this research show that 19% of all sentences are ambiuous. However the writer also found that among 30 students, 4 of them did not produce any ambiguous sentences. The writer assumed these 4 students have understand how to avoid ambiguity by correctly use adjuncts, noun modifier or adjective, add more complement to give specific details, understand some verbs which can be monotransitively and ditransitively used, use correct punctuations, and be specific to the aim or intention of their sentences. From the data, the writer also demonstrated that the ambiguous sentences are produced by the students because of 8 factors; they are (1) Positional and Directional Interpretation of Adjunct (28%), (2) Mixed Quantification (21%), (3) the Use of Non-Restrictive Adjectives (19%), (4) Omission of Vital Punctuations (12%), (5) Clausal non-finiteness (9%), (6) Complex Multiple Modification of Nominal Groups (5%), (7) Multiple Class Membership of Some Verbs (4%), and (8) the Use of Hanging Clausal Modifiers (2%). From the eight causal factors, Positional and Directional Interpretation of Adjunct is the most dominant causal factor affects students to produce ambiguous sentences. The writer assumed that, this is because the students still do not aware the correct use of adjunct, especially to distinguish how to use adjuncts of position and adjuncts of direction clearly.