论文总字数：30132字

摘 要

语言交际中的歧义现象是普遍的。英语的歧义现象在使语言活泼，生动有趣的同时，也给交际带来困难。本文从语音歧义，词汇歧义，句法歧义和语用歧义四个方面对英语歧义现象进行了全面的分析，而且就歧义现象提出了一些避免误用的方法。同时英语歧义使其在不同语篇中实现广泛的应用价值。

关键词：歧义；方法；规避；价值

Contents

1 .Introduction 7

2.Literary review 8

3. Phonetic ambiguity 9

3.1 Phonetic ambiguity caused by homophones 9

3.2 Phonetic ambiguity caused by phrases 10

4.Lexical Ambiguity 11

4.1 Lexical Ambiguity caused by homonym 11

4.2 Lexical Ambiguity caused by polysemy 12

5. Structural ambiguity 13

5.1 Caused by the simplified forms of comparative structure 13

5.2 Caused by negative word “not” 13

5.3 Caused by some word’s special syntactic function 14

6. Pragmatic ambiguity 14

6.1 Pragmatic ambiguity caused by implication 14

6.2 Pragmatic ambiguity caused by transcultural background 15

7.Means for avoiding ambiguity in English 16

7.1 Being accented 16

7.2 Context 16

7.3 Puctuation 17

8. The values of English ambiguity 17

8.1 The value of ambiguity in literary works 18

8.2 The value of ambiguity in advertising 18

8.3 The value of ambiguity in daily life 20

9.Conclusion 20

Works cited 21

1 .Introduction

The definition of ambiguity is: it is the unique link between language form and its meaning. Ambiguity, as is defined in the Webster’s Third International Dictionary(Xu Subo，Types of Ambiguity in English，1999-04), is “the condition of admitting of two or more meanings, of being understood in more than one way, or of referring to two or more things at the same time.” . Ambiguity, as a pervasive feature of the English language, ambiguity can exist in both spoken and written forms of English and arise through a variety of ways. From a purely linguistic point of view, however, ambiguity can be accounted for by mainly four factors: the phonetic, the lexical, the structural, and the pragmatic, hence four types of ambiguity occur: phonetic ambiguity, lexical ambiguity, structural ambiguity, and pragmatic ambiguity.

2.Literary review

Ambiguity is often considered to be the enemy of discourse behavior because it is a negation of discourse communication. The purpose of discourse behavior is communication, while ambiguity distracts communicators. However, everything has two sides. We should also look at its positive aspects while we examine its negative aspects. Ambiguity is the art of language, in poetry novels, prose, drama and other literary works. The creators use their creativity and imagination to make effective use of ambiguous meanings. Uncertainty and polysemy points express complex or vague thoughts. The rich and free imagination of readers makes the meaning of the work go far beyond the definition of literal meaning. It produces a special artistic effect, which makes the work powerful and eternal aesthetic value. In the language practice, since the meaning of the meaning has uncertainty and ambiguity, people not only avoid ambiguity, but also use ambiguity as a unique stylistic means, such as advertisements, humorous sketches, jokes and other language occasions.

Leech defines “ambiguity” as “a word or sentence is ambiguous and can be interpreted

in two or more ways.”(Leech Principles of Pragmatics 1983)Language is an established, customary memorandum symbol. There are complex relationships between language symbols and semantics: limited speech, written symbols, and grammatical rules. Combining different words and phrases leads to homonyms and polysemy. The existence of a large number of people also makes it difficult to avoid the phenomenon of multiple explanations and ambiguities. Ambiguity is one of the essential phenomena of language. It is due to the contradiction between the limited form of language and infinite meaning.

Chomsky proposed that “ambiguity is the difference in the deep structure of sentences with similar surface structures. ”(Chomsky  Essays on Form and Interpretation 1977) He pointed out that any sentence with more than two deep structures is an ambiguous sentence. Revealed the essence of ambiguous sentences. These research results have greatly promoted language learning and communication. Studying the ambiguity phenomenon will continue to deepen people"s understanding of language, understand the possibility of expressing multiple contents in the same form, and improve the rigor of language communication. At the same time, it also plays an important role in the study and improvement of theory and methods.

Lyons" definition of ambiguity is: "Sentences with two or more propositions.” (Lyons Semantics 1977)He from the perspective of descriptive linguistics, have systematically interpreted the ambiguity in terms of English pronunciation, vocabulary, grammar, and semantics. The direct component analysis method pioneered by Lyons. He explained the ambiguity caused by different levels of structure that can not be explained by traditional linguistics. Ambiguity has always been the focus of extensive attention by scholars at home and abroad.

3. Pragmatic ambiguity

Phonetic ambiguity, that is, a word or a phrase sounds that it has at least two meanings, occurs only in spoken English but not in written English(Qiu Shudei English Ambiguity 1998).

3.1 Phonetic ambiguity caused by homophones

Homophone means that a word that is pronounced like another word but has a different spelling or meaning Zhang Yunfei Introduction to Modern English Vocabulary 2004).

The examples analyzed below are several pairs of words which have the same sound but different meanings. If they appear in the spoken language, you will have difficulty in telling them apart.

(1) a: He is sowing now.

b: He is sewing now.

sow and sew have the same pronunciation, however, sow in sentence a means “to plant or scatter seeds”, and sew in sentence b means “to join pieces of cloth together using a needle and thread”.

(2) a: Throw the flower away.

b: Throw the flower away.

flower and flour are a pair of homophones, flower: noun, the part of a plant, often beautiful and colored, that produces seeds or fruit, flour: noun, power made from wheat and used for making bread or cakes. In spoken language, it is difficult for you to tell flower and flour apart.

(3) a: He is flying to Oakland.

b: He is flying to Oakland.

Oakland in sentence a is a city of State California, but Oakland in sentence b is a city of New Zealand . They are a pair of homophones.

(4) “When does the baker follow his trade?”

“Whenever he kneads the dough.”

This example uses “need” and “ knead” which are a pair of homophones and added the

polysemous word” dough”(In slang, this word means money),which makes it difficult for us to know that whether the baker begins his business when he needs the money or the baker begins his business when he rubs the dough.

3.2 Phonetic ambiguity caused by phrases

Phrases that are formed of more than one word usually contain the following elements: head, specifier and complement (The word around which a phrase is formed is termed head. The word on the left side of the heads are said to function as specifier. The words on the right side of the heads are complement) (Dai Weidong Concise English Linguistics Course　1989).

If the end of one word is a consonant sound while the next begins with a vowel, the consonant sounds naturally to be the part of the next word. This phonetic rule, as everybody knows, is called sound-linking or sound liaison. This phenomenon as often as not cause ambiguity, for example,

a bee feeder / a beef eater

The two phrases sound similarly, however, the meaning of the former is absolutely different from the latter. The former means that a man who feeds bee, while the latter means that a man who eats beef.

There are a lot of similar examples: a trained deer/ a train dear; a name / an aim; a nice girl / an ice girl; an ear-phone / a near phone.

4.Lexical Ambiguity

Compared with the phonetic ambiguity, lexical ambiguity might cause much more complicated problems in the understanding of the language, for it exists not only in spoken form but also in written language. Its existence is attributed to certain ambiguous lexical items, namely to polysemous and homonymous words which bound in the English vocabulary.

4.1 Lexical Ambiguity caused by homonym

In the English, there are many pairs of groups of words, which, though different in meaning, are pronounced alike, or spelled alike, or both, such words are called homonyms(Zhang Yunfei Introduction to Modern English Vocabulary 2004).

(1) He took the lead yesterday.

This is a very simple sentence both lexically and structurally, but it is ambiguous. Here the ambiguity resides in the homographic word “lead”. Pronounced either as [li:d],meaning “a leading role or part” or as [led] meaning “a kind of metal”. Thus the sentence may be interpreted to mean either that “He took a leading part (in a certain activity) yesterday” or that “He took away the lead (a kind of metal) yesterday”.

(2) After operation, he could not bear children.

Here the perfect homonym “bear” must necessarily function syntactically as a verb, but the sentence itself can not tell which of the meanings was intended by the speaker or writer. Does it mean “give birth to; produce” or “put up with; tolerate”? In this case, the context in which the sentence is uttered or used often serves to remove the potential ambiguity.

(3) He likes China (china).

In this sentence, “China” and “china” may be said to be a pair of homophonic words. “China” with the first letter capitalized, denotes “a country in Asia”, while “china” with the first letter in its small form, means “crockery”. It is necessary to say that this kind of ambiguity caused by homophones, only exists in spoken English. Spell out, and the homophonic word will become disambiguated immediately.

4.2 Lexical Ambiguity caused by polysemy

A term used in semantic analysis to refer to a lexical item which has a range of different

meanings(Zhang Yunfei Introduction to Modern English Vocabulary 2004).

(1) The food is not hot.

The word “hot” can be translated into “having a high temperature” or “spicy”.

(2) He refused to pay for the board.

Here ambiguity obtains on account of the polysemous word “board”. The sentence can either be interpreted as “He refused to give money for his meals” or as “He refuses to pay money for the councilors” or even as “He refuses to pay money for the “table”, etc. in the

absence of the context.

(3) She is an English teacher.

This nominal phrase “an English teacher” can be comprehended in “a teacher from England” or “a teacher who teaches English language”.

From the above for examples, a conclusion may be drawn that some sentences obtain ambiguity in both written and spoken form, while some, which are ambiguous in written form, may be free from the ambiguity in speech or vice verse.

It is a fact that most ambiguous sentences of this kind will become disambiguated when provided with the context, but in not few cases they may cause confusion, uncertainty and misunderstanding in the mind of the listener or reader. It is also arranged on the part of literary men for stylistic purpose to achieve a variety of stylistic effects such as humor, irony, emphasis and contrast, etc. For example, a very commonly-used and effective rhetorical device, are the results of making use of polysemous and homonymous words purposely so as to make the sentences ambiguous.

5. Structural ambiguity

In written language materials, the most important ambiguity phenomenon lies in structure. Structural ambiguity is also called grammatical ambiguity, which means “ambiguity

caused by the varied interrelationships between words in a sentence. Even though none word is ambiguous, structurally it might still generate ambiguity” (He Landong On English Structural Ambiguity 2006-06). Structural ambiguity is often caused by the linear order of words in a sentence. It often takes place in spoken languages as well as in common phonetic materials.

Structural ambiguity can be divided into two types, one is sententially structural ambiguity; the other is phrasally structural ambiguity.

5.1 Caused by the simplified forms of comparative structure

In English, adverbial clause of comparative degree is often abridged. It is easy to cause ambiguity. We can sort it out and analyze it.

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