[More theory-wrangling]
 
Craig,
 
I think all linguistic theories allow for structural ambiguity - e.g.,
for  a sentence such as "I saw the guy from the coffee shop," which can
be read with the prepositional phrase modifying either "saw" or "guy,"
just about every theory of syntax will talk about the different readings
as being connected to different structures. However, a large class of
theories in what I'll call the "American Formalist" school don't
consider other kinds of ambiguity to be directly relevant to discussions
of syntax. Since they envisage syntax as a component or set of
components separate from semantics, any ambiguity that isn't structural
isn't directly relevant to it. And with cases of structural ambiguity,
most of those approaches will essentially hold that there are two
sentences that have the same surface manifestation - in other words
structural ambiguity is the syntactic equivalent of homonymy. A
"multistructural" theory, on the other hand, would allow for a
*non*-ambiguous sentence having multiple structures at the same time.
 
Optimality Theory, from Johanna's description of it, sounds like it
allows multiple principles to compete to form one structural
representation. I don't *think* that's a multistructural approach; it
sounds more like a kind of Darwinian monostructuralism.
 
Bill Spruiell
 
Dept. of English
Central Michigan University
 
 

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