1

She cut plywood with sides of ten cm.

Are there two meanings in this sentence? I mean does it mean that she cut plywood that has sides of 10cm or she wants plywood to have sides of 10cm and cut it accordingly?

Improve this question
1
  • 1
    Who knows? One would need further context to understand. There are one or two grammatical mistakes in your question however. I think it should say Are there two meanings in this sentence? Does it mean that she cut plywood (non-countable noun, cannot take an indefinite article) that has sides of 10cm or that she wants plywood with sides of 10cm, and cut accordingly?
    – WS2
    Commented Dec 12, 2022 at 21:51

1 Answer 1

Reset to default
2

Yes, theoretically your sentence could mean either:

There was plywood that had sides of 10cm and she cut it

or

She cut plywood so that it had sides of 10cm.

You have to work out which is meant from context. This makes it a poor sentence, and it would be better to write one that removed the ambiguity, for example:

She cut plywood into pieces that had sides of 10cm.

or

She cut pieces of plywood that had had sides of 10cm.

Improve this answer

You must log in to answer this question.

Not the answer you're looking for? Browse other questions tagged .