从语义学角度浅谈英语中的歧义现象
[摘 要]语言学家普遍认为，歧义现象是指一个词或一个句子的含义模棱两可，可以作不止一种解释的现象。由于英语词汇量大，语法灵活多变，语言歧义现象在英语中表现得格外突出。因此，本文首先讨论了歧义的定义，其次从语义学角度通过对引起歧义的各种因素的分析讨论了歧义的分类，进而探讨消除歧义的手段，旨在帮助大家更好的理解歧义现象,以促进英语的学习与使用。
关键词：歧义; 英语; 语义学; 消除歧义
A Semantic Interpretation of English Ambiguity
Abstract: It has been widely accepted by linguists that ambiguity refers to the phenomenon that an equivocal word or sentence can be understood in more than one way. Especially, with large vocabulary and flexible grammar, English presents more apparent ambiguity. Thus, this paper starts with discussing the definition of English ambiguity. And some factors causing ambiguity are analyzed and the classification of ambiguity is discussed from the semantic point of view. Then, various kinds of disambiguation are probed into. By doing so, it aims to help promote the comprehension of ambiguity and improve English learning and using.
Key words: ambiguity; English; semantic; disambiguation
As a universal linguistic phenomenon, ambiguity is involved in various aspects of language and has aroused the interest of many linguistics both abroad and at home. It seems more apparent in English, with large vocabulary and flexible grammar, ambiguity exists in both spoken and written forms and occurs for a variety of reasons. Therefore, it is important for English learners to have a deep understanding on ambiguity. In this paper, it attempts to start with making a tentative analysis of ambiguity in terms of its definition. Then several possible means to disambiguate are suggested after discussing some factors causing ambiguity from the semantic point of view, mainly attributed to help English learners make progress in English learning and using.
1.The Definition of Ambiguity
It is one of the goals of semantic theories and studies to describe and explain ambiguities in language. Kess and Hoppe once said in Ambiguity in Psycholinguistics: “Upon careful consideration, one cannot but be amazed at the ubiquity of ambiguity in language” (Kess & Hoppe, 1972, quoted from张虹, 2007: 47). English linguist William Empson even said that “Ambiguity is the enemy we have to watch”. It shows the importance of the study of ambiguity in linguistic world.
In English, ambiguity is so pervasive that there are many versions to what is ambiguity both abroad and at home. Conventional definitions of ambiguity refers to its property of having two or more meanings. The two phenomena share the property of having “two or more distinct meanings operating in the given context”, which should carry the qualification that the distinct and separate
meanings or ambiguity are denotative, but multiple meaning may admit connotation and other types of associative meaning (Leech, 1981: 23). At home, it is accepted that ambiguity is defined as the fact that a word (or an expression) or a sentence, before realization of stress, stop, intonation or other phonological means and without any more presuppositions or contexts than what the word or the sentence itself creates, can be regarded as two or more different descriptive senses (Zhang, 2007: 1).
To sum up, it is uneasy to give a precise definition of ambiguity, but it seems have been widely accepted by linguists that ambiguity refers to the linguistic phenomenon that an equivocal word or sentence can be understood in more than one way.
2. The Classification of Ambiguity
How does ambiguity come out? The reason can be amount of. So the following classification of ambiguity will be analyzed at phonological level in oral English and at lexical, syntactic in written English from the semantic point of view.
2.1 Phonological Ambiguity
In a natural language , if the acceptable utterances can be interpreted in two or more different ways, they are regarded as ambiguity utterance. 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 (邱述德, 1998).
2.1.1 Phonological ambiguity caused by homophone
Homophone is easy to cause the semantic ambiguity that makes the listener become confused to get the exact meaning.
The example is taken from the class. The English teacher noticed that one of her students was day-dreaming, and not following her work in the blackboard. To recall his attention, she said sharply, “Brown, Brown, board!” The boy startled, looked up. “Yes, teacher, very.” came the reply.
Here, “Board” and “bored” have the same phonological. The teacher wanted Brown to look at the blackboard, but Brown woke up from his dream and didn’t catch his teacher, so he answered immediately “Yes, teacher, very”, misunderstanding his teacher by replying the English class was boring.
2.1.2 Phonological ambiguity caused by liaison
Liaison is the link of sounds or words. In a speech, each sound of word should be linked smoothly and naturally. On the other hand, liaison triggers ambiguity just because it makes words homonymous. It can lead ambiguity through different understanding of words in oral communication.
For example: I had a /greidei/. To the listeners, it can be paraphrased by “I had grade A” or “I had a gray day”. It shows that voice does not has a necessary connection with meaning, but words
with different meanings can have the same pronunciation.
There are a lot of similar examples: a train dear/a trained deer; a name/an aim; a nice girl/an ice girl; an ear-phone/a near phone; I scream/ice cream; see the meat/see them eat.
2.1.3 Phonological ambiguity caused by intonation or stress
In English, there are four basic tones: rising tone, falling tone, falling-rising tone and rising-falling tone. Therefore, if a same sentence is read in a different tone, we can get different understanding that will trigger ambiguity of intonation.
For example: Will you come tomorrow. If read in rising tone, it means a question, asking whether you will come tomorrow or not; if read in falling tone, it means please come tomorrow.
Stress, which means a term used in semantic analysis to refer to a lexical item that has a range of different meanings, also plays an important role in telling the difference of words’ meanings, parts of speech, semantic and structural relationship.
For example: an English teacher. If the stress is on “English”, it means a teacher who teaches English; if the stress is on “teacher”, it is just on the opposite situation which means the one from England is a teacher rather than an engineer or a doctor.
2.2 Lexical Ambiguity
Compared with the phonetic ambiguity, lexcical ambiguity may cause more complicated problems in the understanding of language because it exists not only in spoken English but also in written English.
2.2.1 Lexical ambiguity caused by polysemy
Polysemy is a term used in semantic analysis to refer to lexical item which has a range of different meanings. For example: The food is not hot. The word hot can be translated into spicy or having a high temperature; she cannot bear children, bear means to have a baby or endure, so this sentence can mean she cannot give birth or she cannot stand her children.
2.2.2 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. For example: We saw he swallow. It means we saw her gollop if swallow is a verb; however it means we an animal called swallow if swallow is a noun. The homonym of swallow causes unclear semantics and brings out the ambiguity.
2.2.3 Lexical ambiguity caused by semantic change
With the language development of English, some vocabularies have meaning transfer or meaning changes in a certain context which also causes the ambiguity understanding of a sentence. For example: Please give me a camel. The word camel has an original meaning of a name of an
animal, but its meaning has changed in this sentence that means a top-brand cigarettes. Without knowing this background we may misunderstand this sentence. In addition, billion means trillion in Britain English and one thousand million in American English which is a very big difference in number.
2.3 Syntactic Ambiguity
“Syntactic ambiguity attains in those sentences in which strings of words can be grouped in different ways or in which words can have different grammatical functions depending on the inferred relations among them” (胡壮麟, 2001: 205).
2.3.1 Syntactic ambiguity caused by transferred negation
There is a variety of ways to understand the modified range of the English negative adverb not. For example: I don’t teach because teaching is easy for me. The modified rage of “not” in this sentence is not clear. It can either modify the main clause “I don’t teach” or the adverbial clause of cause “because teaching is easy for me”. So this sentence can be translated into “I don’t teach, the reason is that teaching is easy for me” or “I teach is not because teaching is easy for me”. Such examples can be find in the same structure sentences as “John didn’t marry Alice because she was rich” and “I didn’t go because I was afraid” (张成栋, 1999: 44).
2.3.2 Syntactic ambiguity caused by unclear modification
If the element after the predicate can have various grammatical functions, the ambiguity will be brought out. For example: The statistician studies the whole year. The “whole year” can be the object or adverbial of the verb “studies”. This sentence means “The statistician studies on the object of a whole year” or “The statistician studies during the whole year”.
Also, adverb and adjective are very flexible in English sentences, their unclear modified range can cause ambiguity. For example: She sees the boy with the telescope. “with the telescope” can either be the adverbial of the verb “see” or the noun “boy”. So we may translate this sentence into “she sees the boy by using a telescope” or “she sees a boy who has a telescope”.
2.3.3 Syntactic ambiguity caused by ellipsis
As a grammatical device for preventing repetition and achieving textual cohesion, ellipsis means the omission of elements that would be expected in a correct sentence or phrase. In some clauses, after ellipsis some certain element, only subject and object is left. If the sentence should be clearer, the ellipsis part must be replenished. For example: Mary likes fish better than cats. It can be explained as “Mary likes to eat fish better than cats like to eat fish” or “Mary prefers fish to cats”. The first explanation replenishes predicate part “eat”, the prototype mean that “Mary likes to eat fish more than cats like to eat fish”; in the second explanation the verb “likes” means “prefers”, that is to say, “Mary is a girl who loves animal, she loves fish more than she loves cats”.
3.The Measures of Disambiguation
3.1 Correctly Using Stress and Liaison
In a speech, each sound of word should be linked smoothly and naturally. It can lead ambiguity through different understanding of words in oral communication. In spoken English, with the help of the restricting factors, stress, pause and rhythms we can partly eliminate ambiguity.
For example: Have you been to the /waithaus/.As the speaker, if he put the stress on /wait/, it will be understood as “the building for the living of American president”; if he put the stress on /aus/, it may have different meaning as “a house painted white”.
3.2 Pausing Between Sense-groups
It can make the sentence more clear to add pauses between sense-groups. For example: You must stick the stamp on yourself. The word “on” can be an adverb to make a phrase with “stick” which can be translated into “you should stick the stamp by yourself”; “on” can also be a preposition to constitute a collocation with “yourself” that means “you should sick the stamp on your body”. The ambiguity will not exist if there is a pause between “on” and “yourself”.
3.3 Replacing Ambiguous Words with Synonyms
There are numerous words in English, and there can be a word with the same or similar meaning of another word. So it is an effective way to eliminate ambiguity by replacing ambiguous words with synonyms. For example: He is drawing a cart. Here, “draw” has means “painting” or “pulling”, if “drawing” is replaced by “pulling”, there will be no misunderstanding. Another example is “She cannot bear children”. If “bear” is replaced by “give birth to” or “put up with”, the information receiver will not be confused.
3.4 Resetting Grammatical Structure
The internal structure of a sentence can be seen clearly through the grammatical relations and then the ambiguity can be eliminated. For example: my small child’s cot. It has three meaning based on the grammatical relations: a, my small cot for a child; b, my cot for a small child; c, the cot of my small child. There is no ambiguity whatever meaning we choose. So the exact meaning expressed by the speaker can be got by the adjustment of grammatical relations between words to make it clear of the restrictions made by for, of or small to cot and child.
4. Conclusion
To sum up, as a linguistic phenomenon, ambiguity couldn’t be avoided. As a matter of fact, people can make use of it no matter in literary styles or in study. This thesis analyzes ambiguity and its application in English to make improvement in learning and using English.
Considering the causes of ambiguity, it is clear that unintentional ambiguity could bring some troubles in communicating with each other and it should be avoided no matter in written or spoken
form. Because the phenomenon of ambiguity is produced by the conflict between structure and meaning, understanding the appearance and taking advantage of ambiguity may help us a lot.
References
[1]
[2]
[3]
[4]
[5]
[6]
[7]
Joseph F. Kess & Ronald A. Hoppe. Ambiguity In Psycholinguistics[M]. New York: The Free Press, 1972. Leech, G. N. Semantics[M]. Harmondsworth: Penguin, 1981. Zhang Qinglian. A Discussion on Ambiguity in English[J]. US-China Foreign Language, 2007, (5): 1-5． 胡壮麟. 语言学教程[M]. 北京: 北京大学出版社, 1999. 邱述德. 英语歧义[M]. 北京: 商务印书馆, 1998. 张成栋. 由否定转移产生的歧义现象[J]. 大学英语, 1999, (7): 44. 张虹.产生英语歧义现象的语音与词汇因素分析[J]. Crazy English(Teachers), 2007, (7): 47-49.
从语义学角度浅谈英语中的歧义现象
[摘 要]语言学家普遍认为，歧义现象是指一个词或一个句子的含义模棱两可，可以作不止一种解释的现象。由于英语词汇量大，语法灵活多变，语言歧义现象在英语中表现得格外突出。因此，本文首先讨论了歧义的定义，其次从语义学角度通过对引起歧义的各种因素的分析讨论了歧义的分类，进而探讨消除歧义的手段，旨在帮助大家更好的理解歧义现象,以促进英语的学习与使用。
关键词：歧义; 英语; 语义学; 消除歧义
A Semantic Interpretation of English Ambiguity
Abstract: It has been widely accepted by linguists that ambiguity refers to the phenomenon that an equivocal word or sentence can be understood in more than one way. Especially, with large vocabulary and flexible grammar, English presents more apparent ambiguity. Thus, this paper starts with discussing the definition of English ambiguity. And some factors causing ambiguity are analyzed and the classification of ambiguity is discussed from the semantic point of view. Then, various kinds of disambiguation are probed into. By doing so, it aims to help promote the comprehension of ambiguity and improve English learning and using.
Key words: ambiguity; English; semantic; disambiguation
As a universal linguistic phenomenon, ambiguity is involved in various aspects of language and has aroused the interest of many linguistics both abroad and at home. It seems more apparent in English, with large vocabulary and flexible grammar, ambiguity exists in both spoken and written forms and occurs for a variety of reasons. Therefore, it is important for English learners to have a deep understanding on ambiguity. In this paper, it attempts to start with making a tentative analysis of ambiguity in terms of its definition. Then several possible means to disambiguate are suggested after discussing some factors causing ambiguity from the semantic point of view, mainly attributed to help English learners make progress in English learning and using.
1.The Definition of Ambiguity
It is one of the goals of semantic theories and studies to describe and explain ambiguities in language. Kess and Hoppe once said in Ambiguity in Psycholinguistics: “Upon careful consideration, one cannot but be amazed at the ubiquity of ambiguity in language” (Kess & Hoppe, 1972, quoted from张虹, 2007: 47). English linguist William Empson even said that “Ambiguity is the enemy we have to watch”. It shows the importance of the study of ambiguity in linguistic world.
In English, ambiguity is so pervasive that there are many versions to what is ambiguity both abroad and at home. Conventional definitions of ambiguity refers to its property of having two or more meanings. The two phenomena share the property of having “two or more distinct meanings operating in the given context”, which should carry the qualification that the distinct and separate
meanings or ambiguity are denotative, but multiple meaning may admit connotation and other types of associative meaning (Leech, 1981: 23). At home, it is accepted that ambiguity is defined as the fact that a word (or an expression) or a sentence, before realization of stress, stop, intonation or other phonological means and without any more presuppositions or contexts than what the word or the sentence itself creates, can be regarded as two or more different descriptive senses (Zhang, 2007: 1).
To sum up, it is uneasy to give a precise definition of ambiguity, but it seems have been widely accepted by linguists that ambiguity refers to the linguistic phenomenon that an equivocal word or sentence can be understood in more than one way.
2. The Classification of Ambiguity
How does ambiguity come out? The reason can be amount of. So the following classification of ambiguity will be analyzed at phonological level in oral English and at lexical, syntactic in written English from the semantic point of view.
2.1 Phonological Ambiguity
In a natural language , if the acceptable utterances can be interpreted in two or more different ways, they are regarded as ambiguity utterance. 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 (邱述德, 1998).
2.1.1 Phonological ambiguity caused by homophone
Homophone is easy to cause the semantic ambiguity that makes the listener become confused to get the exact meaning.
The example is taken from the class. The English teacher noticed that one of her students was day-dreaming, and not following her work in the blackboard. To recall his attention, she said sharply, “Brown, Brown, board!” The boy startled, looked up. “Yes, teacher, very.” came the reply.
Here, “Board” and “bored” have the same phonological. The teacher wanted Brown to look at the blackboard, but Brown woke up from his dream and didn’t catch his teacher, so he answered immediately “Yes, teacher, very”, misunderstanding his teacher by replying the English class was boring.
2.1.2 Phonological ambiguity caused by liaison
Liaison is the link of sounds or words. In a speech, each sound of word should be linked smoothly and naturally. On the other hand, liaison triggers ambiguity just because it makes words homonymous. It can lead ambiguity through different understanding of words in oral communication.
For example: I had a /greidei/. To the listeners, it can be paraphrased by “I had grade A” or “I had a gray day”. It shows that voice does not has a necessary connection with meaning, but words
with different meanings can have the same pronunciation.
There are a lot of similar examples: a train dear/a trained deer; a name/an aim; a nice girl/an ice girl; an ear-phone/a near phone; I scream/ice cream; see the meat/see them eat.
2.1.3 Phonological ambiguity caused by intonation or stress
In English, there are four basic tones: rising tone, falling tone, falling-rising tone and rising-falling tone. Therefore, if a same sentence is read in a different tone, we can get different understanding that will trigger ambiguity of intonation.
For example: Will you come tomorrow. If read in rising tone, it means a question, asking whether you will come tomorrow or not; if read in falling tone, it means please come tomorrow.
Stress, which means a term used in semantic analysis to refer to a lexical item that has a range of different meanings, also plays an important role in telling the difference of words’ meanings, parts of speech, semantic and structural relationship.
For example: an English teacher. If the stress is on “English”, it means a teacher who teaches English; if the stress is on “teacher”, it is just on the opposite situation which means the one from England is a teacher rather than an engineer or a doctor.
2.2 Lexical Ambiguity
Compared with the phonetic ambiguity, lexcical ambiguity may cause more complicated problems in the understanding of language because it exists not only in spoken English but also in written English.
2.2.1 Lexical ambiguity caused by polysemy
Polysemy is a term used in semantic analysis to refer to lexical item which has a range of different meanings. For example: The food is not hot. The word hot can be translated into spicy or having a high temperature; she cannot bear children, bear means to have a baby or endure, so this sentence can mean she cannot give birth or she cannot stand her children.
2.2.2 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. For example: We saw he swallow. It means we saw her gollop if swallow is a verb; however it means we an animal called swallow if swallow is a noun. The homonym of swallow causes unclear semantics and brings out the ambiguity.
2.2.3 Lexical ambiguity caused by semantic change
With the language development of English, some vocabularies have meaning transfer or meaning changes in a certain context which also causes the ambiguity understanding of a sentence. For example: Please give me a camel. The word camel has an original meaning of a name of an
animal, but its meaning has changed in this sentence that means a top-brand cigarettes. Without knowing this background we may misunderstand this sentence. In addition, billion means trillion in Britain English and one thousand million in American English which is a very big difference in number.
2.3 Syntactic Ambiguity
“Syntactic ambiguity attains in those sentences in which strings of words can be grouped in different ways or in which words can have different grammatical functions depending on the inferred relations among them” (胡壮麟, 2001: 205).
2.3.1 Syntactic ambiguity caused by transferred negation
There is a variety of ways to understand the modified range of the English negative adverb not. For example: I don’t teach because teaching is easy for me. The modified rage of “not” in this sentence is not clear. It can either modify the main clause “I don’t teach” or the adverbial clause of cause “because teaching is easy for me”. So this sentence can be translated into “I don’t teach, the reason is that teaching is easy for me” or “I teach is not because teaching is easy for me”. Such examples can be find in the same structure sentences as “John didn’t marry Alice because she was rich” and “I didn’t go because I was afraid” (张成栋, 1999: 44).
2.3.2 Syntactic ambiguity caused by unclear modification
If the element after the predicate can have various grammatical functions, the ambiguity will be brought out. For example: The statistician studies the whole year. The “whole year” can be the object or adverbial of the verb “studies”. This sentence means “The statistician studies on the object of a whole year” or “The statistician studies during the whole year”.
Also, adverb and adjective are very flexible in English sentences, their unclear modified range can cause ambiguity. For example: She sees the boy with the telescope. “with the telescope” can either be the adverbial of the verb “see” or the noun “boy”. So we may translate this sentence into “she sees the boy by using a telescope” or “she sees a boy who has a telescope”.
2.3.3 Syntactic ambiguity caused by ellipsis
As a grammatical device for preventing repetition and achieving textual cohesion, ellipsis means the omission of elements that would be expected in a correct sentence or phrase. In some clauses, after ellipsis some certain element, only subject and object is left. If the sentence should be clearer, the ellipsis part must be replenished. For example: Mary likes fish better than cats. It can be explained as “Mary likes to eat fish better than cats like to eat fish” or “Mary prefers fish to cats”. The first explanation replenishes predicate part “eat”, the prototype mean that “Mary likes to eat fish more than cats like to eat fish”; in the second explanation the verb “likes” means “prefers”, that is to say, “Mary is a girl who loves animal, she loves fish more than she loves cats”.
3.The Measures of Disambiguation
3.1 Correctly Using Stress and Liaison
In a speech, each sound of word should be linked smoothly and naturally. It can lead ambiguity through different understanding of words in oral communication. In spoken English, with the help of the restricting factors, stress, pause and rhythms we can partly eliminate ambiguity.
For example: Have you been to the /waithaus/.As the speaker, if he put the stress on /wait/, it will be understood as “the building for the living of American president”; if he put the stress on /aus/, it may have different meaning as “a house painted white”.
3.2 Pausing Between Sense-groups
It can make the sentence more clear to add pauses between sense-groups. For example: You must stick the stamp on yourself. The word “on” can be an adverb to make a phrase with “stick” which can be translated into “you should stick the stamp by yourself”; “on” can also be a preposition to constitute a collocation with “yourself” that means “you should sick the stamp on your body”. The ambiguity will not exist if there is a pause between “on” and “yourself”.
3.3 Replacing Ambiguous Words with Synonyms
There are numerous words in English, and there can be a word with the same or similar meaning of another word. So it is an effective way to eliminate ambiguity by replacing ambiguous words with synonyms. For example: He is drawing a cart. Here, “draw” has means “painting” or “pulling”, if “drawing” is replaced by “pulling”, there will be no misunderstanding. Another example is “She cannot bear children”. If “bear” is replaced by “give birth to” or “put up with”, the information receiver will not be confused.
3.4 Resetting Grammatical Structure
The internal structure of a sentence can be seen clearly through the grammatical relations and then the ambiguity can be eliminated. For example: my small child’s cot. It has three meaning based on the grammatical relations: a, my small cot for a child; b, my cot for a small child; c, the cot of my small child. There is no ambiguity whatever meaning we choose. So the exact meaning expressed by the speaker can be got by the adjustment of grammatical relations between words to make it clear of the restrictions made by for, of or small to cot and child.
4. Conclusion
To sum up, as a linguistic phenomenon, ambiguity couldn’t be avoided. As a matter of fact, people can make use of it no matter in literary styles or in study. This thesis analyzes ambiguity and its application in English to make improvement in learning and using English.
Considering the causes of ambiguity, it is clear that unintentional ambiguity could bring some troubles in communicating with each other and it should be avoided no matter in written or spoken
form. Because the phenomenon of ambiguity is produced by the conflict between structure and meaning, understanding the appearance and taking advantage of ambiguity may help us a lot.
References
[1]
[2]
[3]
[4]
[5]
[6]
[7]
Joseph F. Kess & Ronald A. Hoppe. Ambiguity In Psycholinguistics[M]. New York: The Free Press, 1972. Leech, G. N. Semantics[M]. Harmondsworth: Penguin, 1981. Zhang Qinglian. A Discussion on Ambiguity in English[J]. US-China Foreign Language, 2007, (5): 1-5． 胡壮麟. 语言学教程[M]. 北京: 北京大学出版社, 1999. 邱述德. 英语歧义[M]. 北京: 商务印书馆, 1998. 张成栋. 由否定转移产生的歧义现象[J]. 大学英语, 1999, (7): 44. 张虹.产生英语歧义现象的语音与词汇因素分析[J]. Crazy English(Teachers), 2007, (7): 47-49.