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English 083 夏琛妮 108092081

Language Ambiguity from Lexical Perspective



Ambiguity is very common in language. It would cause problems in communication often. Therefore, to study ambguity is significant that misunderstanding could be avoided and further more be used creatively in some way. The study can be traced back to ancient European countries, as early as ancient Greece, Aristotle, a well-known philosopher and thinker, discussed ambiguity in his work De sophistics Elenchis. Then what is ambiguity? The general sense of ambiguity refers to a word or sentence which expresses more than one meaning. Linguistically, ambiguity should be dealt with at the levels of phonology, lexis and syntactic structure (surface and deep structure). Since it’s a big topic to sutdy, this paper’s intention is only to analyze how ambiguilty may have its origins in lexis. There are mainly four aspects in lexis leading to ambiguity.

First are the homonymy and the polysemy. John I. Saeed stated in his Semantics that homonyms and polysemys are subject to make a sentence understood in different ways. Homonyms and polysemys are not easily to distinguish from each other. But in a dictionary, it’s easy to tell them apart. Each different meaning of a homonym is listed separetely with its own entry while that of a polysemy is directly below the polysemy without apart entry. If without dictionary, they can be recognized according to following explanation.

1)Homonyms: pairs and groups of words, though different in meanings, are pronounced alike, or spelled alike, or both. In English, there are many such words, e.g.

(1) (2)

They drive to the bank. There are a lot of fans.

The above underlined words contain two or more meanings respectively. In sentence (1), “bank” is a homonymy, referring to “establishment for keeping money and valuable safely, the money being paid out on the customer’s order.” or “sloping land or earth, often forming a border of a division.” This ambiguty will surely cause misunderstanding. In sentence (2), fan also has several meanings. Three of them are “a device for creating a current of air by movement of a surface or surfaces”, “an enthusiastic devotee of sports” and “an ardent follower and admirer”. So the sentence will be confusing.

2) Polysemy is a term used in semantic analysis to refer to a lexical item which has a range of different meanings. The ability of one word to denote several senses is one of the basic peculiarities of human speech. It may be said






that, in English, polysemy is the rule and, one-meaning word is the exception in English, that is, polysemous words are very frequent and the one-meaning words are rare. Let us see the lexical ambiguity which is caused by polysemy.

(3)He was seated by the chairman. (4) He is a baby doctor.

In sentence (3), “by” is a polysemy. It has two different meanings listed in Oxford Advanced Learner’s English-Chinese Dictionary: A. near sb/sth; at the side of sb/sth; beside sb/ sth; B. used,usually after a passive verb, to show who or what does, creates or causes sth. So the sentence could be interpreted in two ways: A. He was seated beside the chairman. B. The chairman arranged a seat for him. In Sentence (4), there are two understandings: A. He is a doctor for babies. B. He is still a quite young doctor.

Second is the homophony. When several words have the same pronunciation but mean differently, they are called homophony. Homophonys raise amibiguity and misunderstangind especially in oral communication. Here is the example:

(5)In Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland, there is an interesting dialogue between Alice and the White Queen. The author made good use of lexical ambiguity to make the dialogue humorous and lively.

“How is bread made?”

“I know that!” Alice cried eagerly. “You take some flour…”

“Where do we pick flower?” the White Queen asked. “In a garden or in the hedges?”

“Well, it isn’t picked at all,” Alice explained, “it’s ground…” “How many acres of ground?” said the White Queen.

In the dialogue, underlined words “flour” and “flower” are pronounced the same. Flour is something for making bread and flower is some plant. That’s why the White Queen got the wrong idea.

Third is the difference between American English and British English. Although both American and Englishman speak English, their pronunciation, spelling, useage of words sometimes are different. Here are examples.

(6)NO GAS TODAY.

(7)The project will cost a billion dollars.

In sentence (6), “gas” means different to American and Englishman. In America, “gas” means “gasoline”---both petrol and coal gas. But in Britain, it






only refers to coal gas. In sentence (7), “billion” causes ambiguity. It means 1000 million to American while the Englishman count it one trillion.

Fourth is the change of meaning. As the world never stops developing and changing, meanings are changing with the times. Meanings vary in different contexts. Here are the examples:

(8)Please give me a camel.

(9)Sell the bear’s skin before one has caught the bear.

In sentence (8), “camel” originally refers to an animal with a long neck and one or two HUMPS on its back, used in desert countries for riding on or for carrying goods and now is also a brand name of cigarette. So when the sentence is expressed in modern life, camel means cigarettes named Camel. In sentence u(9), bear doesn’t mean the animal but the bear market that is the stock market with continuous declining price.

In conlusion, ambiguty in general is the result of homonymy and polysemy, homophony, differences between American English and British English and change of meaning. Having a good knowledge of ambiguity tends to raise less misunderstanding and commuicate better.

Reference：

[1]John I. Saeed Semantics[M]. Beijing：Foreign LanguageTeaching and Research Press，2000:64.

[2] Oxford Advanced Learner’s English-Chinese Dictionary [Z]. ( the Sixth Edition) ， Beijing: TheCommercial Press, 2004: 221，228，1069.

[3]英语词汇学教程 A SURVRY OF ENGLISH LEXICOLOGY 上海外语教育出版社. [4]新编简明英语语言学教程 第二版 上海外语教育出版社

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