Ambiguity when describing with verbs, e.g. 酒を飲ませる人

Question

Here's a small thing I never thought about for too long as I always kinda dismissed it due to the context usually being clear enough, but now I've gotten curious and I figured I'd ask away:

Let's take the example from the thread title「酒を飲ませる人」: Can this generally be understood as both "the person, who makes/lets somebody else drink alcohol" and "the person, who's being made/let to drink alcohol"? Same question with「命令する人」: "The person who gives orders" and "the person who receives orders"?

I'm not really sure how I'd go about googling this particular question so I apologize if this is a very simple one.

Thank you very much in advance!

Answer 1

Yes, 酒を飲ませる人 is ambiguous. In general, this ambiguity can happen in Japanese relative clauses typically when a verb takes two or more human arguments (～が, ～に, ～を, etc). Here are similar questions:

• Clarification about how 惚れた should be translated
• が in subordinate clauses
• How does the passive form work here?
• The meaning of ”あれは魔術師に与えられた祝福”
• Relative Clause Ambiguous
• Parsing the sentence 書く人物の顔が頭に入っていないと効果はない

Usually the surrounding context can tell the intended interpretation. To disambiguate this without any further context, you can simply fill one of the missing arguments.

• 彼女が酒を飲ませる人: the person who she gives alcohol to
• 彼女に酒を飲ませる人: the person who makes her drink alcohol