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a. He showed me an article which he wrote last night and which was about whales.

Could 'last night' modify 'showed'?

Could the sentence mean: Last night he showed me an article which he wrote and which was about whales.

I know that (a) is an awkward sentence, but I think it is grammatical. I want to see if it is ambiguous. To me it seems that 'last night' can only modify 'wrote', but I am not sure about that.

Many thanks.

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  • No, he wrote it last night, adverbial phrase: When he wrote it.
    – Lambie
    Commented Jul 20, 2020 at 21:32

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If someone uses '... wrote last night ...' in a sentence, then the sentence indicates the time that it was written. If they meant that something else happened last night, they need to construct the sentence differently. It isn't ambiguous.

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