preview

Essay On English Ambiguity

Decent Essays

On Different Types of English Ambiguity

【Abstract】 Ambiguity is a wide phenomenon in all languages, including in English. Sometimes, ambiguity can cause lots of problems if people fail to handle the ambiguity in English properly. Thus, learning English ambiguity turns to be rather important and rational solutions to erase ambiguity help people better convey and receive information. This paper analyses different types of “ambiguity” in English from aspects of the phonological, the lexical, the syntactic and the pragmatic, and illustrates several approaches to eliminate ambiguity.
【摘要】在所有语言中都会出现歧义现象,英语也是如此。有时,英语中的歧义会给人们带来许多麻烦,如果人们没有正确处理出现的歧义。因此,学习英语中出现的歧义非常重要。 使用合适的方法消除英语中的歧义可以帮助人们更好地接收和传递信息。本文从语音方面、词汇方面、结构方面和语用方面分析了英语中出现的歧义。

【Key words】 English; ambiguity; reasons; solutions

1.Introduction: As we look up a word, it is common to find a single word with different meanings. For the variance of words meaning, when we want to convey certain …show more content…

Different types of ambiguity 3.1 Phonological ambiguity In linguistics, phonological ambiguity is a type of ambiguity that arises out of the fact that words sound identical, but in fact have different meanings. Besides, phonological ambiguity only occurs in spoken English(邱淑德 英语歧义1998). There are three main reasons of phonological ambiguity: intonation ambiguity, liaison ambiguity and homophony ambiguity
3.1.1 Intonation
Different from Chinese, a tone language, English is an intonation language. As a musical element of an utterance, intonation is defined as the variation of the voice pitch when speaking. In spoken English, when people say words with more than one syllable or sentence with different intonation placements, ambiguity usually occurs for people’s different perceptions of information. Observing the following example with different intonation:
(1)a. She has bought a car in Beijing. b. SHE has bought a car in Beijing. c. She HAS BOUGHT a car in Beijing. d. She has bought A car in

Get Access