 (2) can mean that the chicken is ready to be fed or to be fed to someone depending on the thematic assignment. In a popular semantic framework, this is because ‘the chicken’ is assigned agent on one reading and patient on another. Arguably, these assignments is corresponds syntactic phenomenon assuming principles that align thematic role and syntactic position (see Baker 1988, 1997; Williams 1994; and Grimshaw 1990) but the semantic point stands either way. They result in a clear ambiguity that we may term ‘thematic ambiguity’ for present purposes.