Ambiguity in the English Language
Clark Elliott

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Overview:

People of all cultures use language to communicate. Some languages, such as sign language are not spoken, but still follow most of the same rules. Many animals also have rudimentary languages they use for communication.

Languages communicate much more than that which is explicit in the words used. Pragmatics is one subfield of language study that formally exams such "reading between the lines" (e.g., Selwyn-Jones )

People who have not formally studied language seldom realize how complex human languages are. Part of the problem is that language, utterances, and words in general, are one of the building blocks of human thought and thus so ingrained in our way of thinking that it is difficult to realize that we are actually automatically performing many simultaneous and rapid processes in the apprehending of meaning from words. We understand language—despite its extensive ambiguity—because we know how the world works already, and the words we hear simply give us rudimentary cues to what we mostly already know.

Computers, by contrast, have little, or no understanding of the world, and hence are severely constrained in their ability to understand language.

The Assignment:

In this assignment you will take one or more pieces of English text, of your choosing, and analyze it in fine detail for exactly what is explicit in the words themselves, and what is, by contrast implied.

Produce a thoughtful analysis illustrating many different ways in which your English passage is, literally, ambiguous, but which presents no problem for a human reader/listener.

Use a dictionary, and simple online resources you may find relevant to the understanding of language. Include in your analysis instances of:

1. elision: the omitting of information that is nonetheless understood implicitly by the reader.

2. word-sense ambiguity: it is not clear from the preceding context which dictionary word-sense, or sub-sense, is intended. For example, consider the word sense itself, which in the dictionary has many (numbered) senses itself many senses of which have (lettered) subsenses as well.

3. Elliptical references: the omission of a word or phrase that is necessary for grammatical construction—e.g. "While cleaning the floor he found money" instead of "While he was cleaning the floor he found money."

4. Idiomatic references: when the cumulative meaning of words is different from their individual definitions—e.g., "The rule applies across the board."

5. Metaphor: "My arms grew heavy."

6. Simile: ("When he saw his son's report card he erupted like a volcano");

7. Structural ambiguity (also known as syntactic ambiguity): where the structure of the utterance is made clear by the context—e.g., "After the prostitutes were arrested by the police they made them sit in the back of the patrol car." Who is doing the making, and who the sitting?

   See the many examples of structural difficulties at this excellent site.

8. Homonym/homograph ambiguity: Words are spelled the same (or in speech sound the same) but have different meanings. "Should we turn left here?" "That's right."

9. Slang: Informal words and phrases more common in speech than writing, typically restricted to restricted contexts or groups.

You should favor a wide range of ambiguity types over a large number of the same ambiguity type. (E.g., we only need a couple of instances of word-sense ambiguity.) You should have a least a portion of your passage where you analyze every word in the text, but may, also, have sections of your text where you select only interesting instances of ambiguity to round out your analysis.

What you do:

• Using the example as a model, find an interesting piece of text and analyze it for ambiguity in the same way.
• Number each word, or piece of a phrase, that you wish to examine, as in the above linked example. Write a sentence, or short paragraph for each so that you explain which type of ambiguity is present, as discussed in class.
• Give examples of alternate possible interpretations.
• You may use one or passages as your source text(s).
• Present good coverage of the different kinds of ambiguity.
• For at least one instance of word sense ambiguity (the most common), include actual numbered/lettered word sense / subsense entries from some dictionary in your discussion.
• Here is a checklist you can use if it will help you to keep track of what has to be done. I do not need to see this checklist, it is for your use only.
• Note: submitting the work of another student for class credit is an academic integrity violation .

Discussion:

SENSE and SUBSENSE—"In what sense do you mean that?"

Words in the dictionary have numbered SENSEs and each sense may have lettered SUBSENSEs. When it is implicit, not explicit, which sense or subsense is to be inferred from the context, there is likely to be word sense ambiguity.

For example, in the entry for the word sense at Webster.com there are 7 senses for the word "sense," with many subsenses, for just the noun.

"I saw the boy on the hill with binoculars." What is the structure of this sentence?

1. I, with the binoculars, saw the boy on the hill.
2. The boy had the binoculars, he was on the hill, and I saw him.
3. The hill had the binoculars (on it), the boy was on that hill, and I saw him.
4. [Believe it or not there are perhaps 20 more...!]

Think of it this way: can reordering the clauses in the sentence, or adding commas change the way the sentence is commonly understood? Do certain parts of the sentence refer to other parts of the sentence? By contrast, in the sentence:

"It was really something."

...the "It" is ambiguous, but there is no ambiguity about the structure of the sentence. You should refer to this as "referential ambiguity."

"I hit the ball with the bat and it flew out of the park,"— what does "it" refer to? (e.g., could be: I hit the ball with the bat and it flew out of my hand, in which "it" would be referring to the bat).

"I ran into the dean's office and his jaw dropped"

Whose jaw dropped? There is no explicit reference to the dean. It is simply that we know who is likely to be in the dean's office.

"My arms got heavy"

"I was feeling the same sensations I would have felt if my arms were heavier and I still had to hold them up"

http://www.thefreedictionary.com/elliptical:


3. (Literary & Literary Critical Terms) (of speech, literary style, etc)
   a. very condensed or concise, often so as to be obscure or ambiguous

http://www.thefreedictionary.com/elision:

2. The act or an instance of omitting something.