Whoop, that's carelessness (or extraordinary good fortune?) on my part. I didn't mean to imply an actual Greek suffix, I was using -o as a theoretical example.
However, just glancing again at Wikipedia I see that "In Modern Greek Ω represents the same sound as omicron". So actually this is a perfect example of the native speaker's bias I'm talking about. You can't tell those suffixes apart in speech because of spelling, you can tell them apart because of context— but you're so used to conceptualizing them as fundamentally different, it didn't even occur to you that to a non-native they sound the same.
It's also worth noting also that headlines follow their own peculiar grammar rules which make them unusually prone to forming garden path sentences— lots of native speakers get confused sometimes too. ESL courses cover headlines specifically, since their grammatical structure is so opaque: http://www.esl-lounge.com/student/reading/4r46-headline-engl...
Don't take any of this as a criticism of your broader point— I'm willing to grant there are levels of ambiguity, and English with its highly lexicalized grammar — and especially Headline English with its nearly absent explicit grammar — is definitely up there on the scale. I just wanted to point out that no matter how we analyze them, all languages are natural to parse for native speakers and awkward to parse for non-native speakers— that's not related, or is only vaguely related, to their intrinsic ambiguity.
I definitely agree with your broad point, especially about headline grammar. I disagree on this being mostly a native vs non-native speaker issue, though. I'm sure you will agree that a language where most words can be used as multiple parts of speech is more ambiguous than one where they cannot.
Oh, like I said, I'll totally grant that if we're talking about lexical ambiguity. Words in isolating languages accumulate extra meanings, just like morphemes in inflecting languages do.
But again, that's just because of highly lexicalized grammar; it's practically no different from having an "ambiguous" system of inflection, or bizarre energy-focused polysynthesis, which a native speaker would never mistake. That's where I'm saying someone who grew up with a strongly inflected or polysynthetic language would be biased.
And I hope you don't take this as a criticism of your English— you're obviously perfectly fluent! There's simply a basic level of intuitive understanding of a language which is impossible to get without growing up with it from infancy. That's why in linguistics we don't talk about fluency as much as native vs. non-native speakers. It's where you can really separate the meat from the bone, if you will.
However, just glancing again at Wikipedia I see that "In Modern Greek Ω represents the same sound as omicron". So actually this is a perfect example of the native speaker's bias I'm talking about. You can't tell those suffixes apart in speech because of spelling, you can tell them apart because of context— but you're so used to conceptualizing them as fundamentally different, it didn't even occur to you that to a non-native they sound the same.
It's also worth noting also that headlines follow their own peculiar grammar rules which make them unusually prone to forming garden path sentences— lots of native speakers get confused sometimes too. ESL courses cover headlines specifically, since their grammatical structure is so opaque: http://www.esl-lounge.com/student/reading/4r46-headline-engl...
Don't take any of this as a criticism of your broader point— I'm willing to grant there are levels of ambiguity, and English with its highly lexicalized grammar — and especially Headline English with its nearly absent explicit grammar — is definitely up there on the scale. I just wanted to point out that no matter how we analyze them, all languages are natural to parse for native speakers and awkward to parse for non-native speakers— that's not related, or is only vaguely related, to their intrinsic ambiguity.