Ambiguity in English

Ambiguity in English

According to the Oxford English Dictionary, the 500 words used most in the English language each have an average of 23 different meanings. The word “round,” for instance, has 70 distinctly different meanings. The variance of word meanings in natural language has always posed problems for those who attempt to construct an unambiguous and consistent statement. It is often the case that a written statement could be interpreted in several ways by different individuals, thus rendering the statement subjective rather than objective. Therefore, it is very important for English learners to have a deep understanding on ambiguity.

There are several types of ambiguity, such as phonetic ambiguity, semantic ambiguity，structural ambiguity, and pragmatic ambiguity.

Phonetic ambiguity

Phonetic ambiguity, which occurs only in spoken English but not in written form, result from phonetic structure of the sentence, since the acoustic unit of connected speech is the sense group or breath group, words are linked together smoothly and naturally. Sound liaison sometimes might cause indecision in mind of the listener upon which meaning I intended by the speaker.

an aim an ear-phone

an name a near-phone

As we know, many English words especially monosyllabic ones have same or similar pronunciation, such as for / four, bear / bare, right / write, there / their and so on. In the following sentences, although the spellings and meanings of pair, pear and pare are different, their pronunciations are the same:

Top-of-the range training shoes now cost about 100 pounds a pair.

They served pear and almond tarts as desserts.

The luxury tax won’t really do much to pare down the budget deficit.

So when we hear the three words, we may be confused by their pronunciation. Besides, omission or reduction of certain sounds can cause ambiguity, too.

Semantic ambiguity

Semantic ambiguity’s existence is attributed to certain ambiguous lexical items, namely to polysemous and homonymous words which abound in the English vocabulary, for example: He is drawing a cart. Which can be understood in two ways: He is drawing a picture of cart or He is pulling a cart. It is the different meaning of one word that causes lexical ambiguity. Sometimes the usage of the conjunction can cause lexical ambiguity, too. For example, “since” can be used in a time adverbial clause, also it can be used in a condition adverbial clause.

Since I lost my glasses yesterday, I haven’t been able to do any work.

This sentence has two