Syntactic Ambiguity in News Headlines: A Linguistic Analysis of Structural Ambiguity and Its Interpretative Effects

Abstract

This study investigates the linguistic phenomenon of syntactic ambiguity in English-language news headlines, focusing on how structural features affect reader interpretation. Drawing on a qualitative analysis of selected headlines from Dawn, a prominent Pakistani newspaper, the research identifies various types of structural ambiguities including prepositional phrase attachment, reduced relative clauses, compound noun stacks, and coordination ambiguity. Through syntactic parsing and psycholinguistic models such as garden-path theory, the study reveals how headline brevity and grammatical compression frequently lead to misinterpretation. These ambiguities, often arising from omitted function words and noun stacking, pose significant risks to comprehension, especially in digital media contexts where headlines are consumed in isolation. The findings underscore the ethical implications of such ambiguity in journalism, where misleading interpretations can shape public discourse and trust. This research contributes to a broader understanding of the cognitive and communicative dynamics at the intersection of language structure and media representation.