Teacher Discussion Forums

"Put the cat on the sofa by the window in the living room."

I voted in 'any of them' as a non-native speaker and I add, isn't it the matter of intonation when one says the sentence that will change its meaning?

José

It's ambiguous in written English, especially in the absence of additional cotext or context, but can be made clear in a speaking situation both by context, and by patterns of stress (as our friend Jose' has pointed out). The trick for the listener is to determine what part is the noun phrase serving as the indirect object of the verb, "put", and what part is the direct object.

NP --> NP + (PP*) A noun phrase may consist of a noun phrase followed by any number of optional prepositional phrases.

Larry Latham