Is there a language in which sentences like this cant be ambiguous?

Interesting.. maybe one where the genders are differentiated between king and Napoleon?

russian, easily

Yeah I have this problem when I write in English.

in slovak yeah, its amibuous in english too

>>78923160
also polish

>>78923069
In Russian it would be clear. The possesive 'his' would indicate whether you were talking about Napoleon or the king.

>>78923352
also tatar

>>78923160
>>78923352
>>78923389

so languages with cases that mark the different role words play in a sentence dont have this problem?

>>78923431

does tatar have cases?

I wish we a Greek or German speaker told us if this is ambiguous in their language.

Latin.

There is the third person possessive and the reflexive possessive. I think most descendent languages from Latin use only the reflexive.

So it would be
> Napoleon regem Hispaniae abripuit et fratrem suum in soilio posuit.
(Napoleon's brother)
> Napoleon regem Hispaniae abripuit et fratrem ejus in solio posuit.
(The king's brother)

>>78923134
They would have the same gender in every single language out there: masculine.

>>78923601
Case has nothing to do with it. 'Brother' is accusative and the possessive adjective would also have to be declined for the accusative. The only way to do it is with separate possessive adjectives for the speaker (called 'reflexive') and for a general third person.

>>78923601
Yep, Tatar does have 6 cases

>>78923601
Btw, translation of the sentence on pic related still will be very ambiguous, even in Russian

>>78923069
In Swedish, there's the reflexive possessive pronoun "sin" that would be used if it was the subject's (Napoleon's) brother and not the predicate's (the king of Spain's).

>>78923069
it has to do with order

it would be the brother of napoleon

or else king's brother would be used

within good estimation at least

>>78923792
you are right

Am I right in thinking the ambiguity disappears by saying "his own brother"?

>>78923069

>Napoleon kidnappasi Espanjan kuninkaan ja laittoi veljensä valtaistuimella

>Napoleon kidnappasi Espanjan kuninkaan ja laittoi hänen veljensä valtaistuimella

I can't explain this well at 5 am so I won't even try

The simple way to clarify this in English is with the adjective 'own'.

> Napoleon kidnapped the king of Spain and put his own brother on the throne.

For the other case:
> Napoleon kidnapped the king of Spain and put the king's brother on the throne.

>>78923134
>maybe one where the genders are differentiated between king and Napoleon?
I'm not sure if you're shitposting, or being dumb, but I had a good laugh

>>78923069
"Napoleón secuestró al rey de España y puso a su hermano en el trono"

"Napoleón secuestró al rey de España y puso al hermano de este en el trono"

>>78924282

the first one should be "a su propio hermano"

the second one is fine, but éste, not este (although I think la real academia said it no longer matters to mark that)
I know it is possible to rewrite that in non ambiguous way, but it isnt a very elegant solution

I think it really depends whether or not your sentence is ambiguous in German or not, bacause the word used in order to replace 'his' sounds rather antiquated to me.

>>78923069
aren't there ambiguities in wh- questions in general? how about this example in spanish.
¿qué contiene la concha? can be thought of what is inside the pussy or what has (contains) the pussy, right? or in italian you can ask chi ama la figa? and it is not clear if that's who loves pussy? or who does the pussy love? i think the situation is better in brazilian purtuguese which allows both VS and SV word order in wh-questions with unaccusatives so there are unambiguous. quem ama a bunda? vs quem a bunda ama? silly examples but you get the idea.

Gee, who knew leaving out information made a sentence ambiguous

>>78923069
It is pretty easy to formulate that sentence in a non-ambiguos way without changing that sentence structure too much:

>Napoleon kidnapped the king of Spain and put his OWN brother on the throne
Napoleon is the subject and the word "own" clearly establishes an easily perceivable connection to the subject. I'm not meaning that in a grammar geeky way.

The same applies to German, people would pretty much formulate it like you did in a similar fashion(without translating it in a literal way):

>Napoleon entführte (kidnapped) den König von Spanien und ließ dafür seinen Bruder den Thron besteigen (... and let instead his brother the throne mount)
Ambigious(even though the meaning is pretty apparent, especially with contextual knowledge - >same with the English language btw)


>Napoleon entführte den König von Spanien und ließ dafür seinen EIGENEN Bruder den Thron besteigen.
Version 2


>tl;dr
Yes, possibly ambiguous formulations also linger around in the German language

>>78923069
Yes.
Napoleons nolaupīja Spānijas karali un iesēdināja savu brāli tronī. - Napoleons brother
Napoleons nolaupīja Spānijas karali un iesēdināja viņa brāli tronī. - Spanish king's brother

>>78923966
>his own
Whose own?

>>78926601
>Napoleon kidnapped the king of Spain and put his own brother on the throne
This sentence is talking about Napoleons own brother, as Napoleon himself is the original subject of the sentence.

The sentence starts talking about Napoleon and goes on to mention the king of Spain while referring to Napoleon (specifically referring to his actions in kidnapping the king of Spain) it then later mentions "his own brother" while still referring to Napoleon so therefore it is talking about Napoleons brother.

I'm sorry if this doesn't make too much sense, I dont know any of the technical words for what I am describing because I assumed that since I already spoke English there was no need for me to pay attention during English class at school.

>>78923069
In Mandingo they can actually distinguish this

>>78923069
Unambiguous in Norwegian:
"Napoleon kidnappet kongen av Spania og kronet broren sin til konge."
sin = Napoleon's

"Napoleon kidnappet kongen av Spania og kronet broren hans til konge."
hans = the king's

>>78924400
>the word used in order to replace 'his' sounds rather antiquated to me
I think you should really expand your active vocabulary of the German language. Considering the word "jener" antiquated is pretty much newspeak-tier.

>>78923069
In Swedish you can use sin/sitt/sina to indicate the person

There are plenty of such ambiguities in EVERY language, but as you should have known already, there's no ambiguity when there's context given to it.

This isn't really ambiguous in English. Without other information or context, this means that Amanda had the problem. (This may vary with other dialects of English but I doubt it.)

>>78923719
>>78923986
(Different American) "Gender" means something special in linguistics. Gender includes M, F, but also things like neutral, "common" which is apparently a Nordic pan-human linguistic class, animate, inanimate, sentient, non-sentient, etc. Also there are really strange classes in some languages - weather and houses in one gender, male humans in another, etc.

See especially: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Grammatical_gender

>>78927968
Find a language where 'king' is not masculine. I'll wait.