Originally Posted by
spoofer
When there are two readings, sometimes it is hard so see a second reading if your mind has already seen the first. The ambiguous language is specifically the sequence of adjective noun noun. To give another example, online address book. It could be a book of online addresses or an address book that is online. This sort of stuff is taught in introduction to linguistics. Students learn to use nested brackets to indicate what modifies what.
[first [three months] ] vs. [first three [months] ] -> the first occurrence of three months versus the first three occurrences of a month
Here is another example of the sort of thing that students are asked: Use brackets to indicate the two readings of the sentence, "Sarah gave a bath to her dog wearing a pink t-shirt." Some people see both readings right away. Others only see the reading with Sarah wearing a pink shirt.