1、ambiguityrefers to the linguistic phenomena that constituents of the sentence have more than one lexical/grammatical interpretations.Eg,We saw her duck. She has a duck/ she was ducking你在做什么？ What are you doing? / what is your job? 这个人谁也不认识？ Nobody knows this person. / this person knows nobody 她是去年生的
2、小孩。She was the child born last year. / she gave birth to a baby last year.A. lexical ambiguityrefers to the ambiguity which is caused by the different interpretation of a certain word in a sentence.Eg, He is looking for glasses.He is looking for spectacles./ vessels made of glass used for drinking l
3、iquidShe was seated by the general manager.She was offered a seat by the gentle man./ she was seated by the side of/ give a placeThe rest of the police is insufficient.The remaining police is / the relaxationThe causes of lexical ambiguity are:a) polysemy The criminal lawyer is coming. The lawyer wh
4、o committed crime/ defends for the criminal Mr. Smith is going to marry Jane at the church. b) homonymy The boy was attracted by the ball/ball. Show me your table./table. Desk/ chartc) differences between American English and British Englisheg, He lives on the second floor.B. grammatical ambiguitywh
5、ich is caused by the different interpretation of the syntactic structure of the sentence.Eg, The fat managers wife is fond of pretty clothes.The policeman hit the man with a stick.She gave her baby pictures.a)She gave some pictures to her baby.b) She gave her some pictures drawn for baby.c) She gave
6、 her some pictures of baby.d) She gave her some pictures drawn by baby.Some types of grammatical ambiguity1) prepositional phraseeg, John wrote a poem on a tombstone.John telephoned Mary in hospital.2)pronouneg, John said to Bill that he had seen the woman before .The parents of the girls were asham
7、ed of their conducts.3)modal verbseg. He may come into the room in five minutes.4)attributiveeg, He used to live in a big brick house at in front of the hill.There is also a theatre near the business center which was crowded every night.5)Object and its relevant elementseg, They called Susan a waitr
8、ess.ask a waitress to serve Susan / they said Susan was a waitress /they phoned Susan who was a waitress.We found John an experienced doctor.6)Adverbialeg, The students will discuss their plan to hold a party in the classroom.The manager promised to give a bonus to each employee later.the manager pr
9、omised to give a bonus to each employee at a time in the future/ the manager later promised to7)non-infinitive verbal phrase eg, I caught the boy smoking a cigarette.The dancing girl in the hall used to be his girlfriend.The dog is too hot to eat.1) s genitive caseeg, We were deeply moved by the womans story.Janes loss has nothing to do with me.2) ClauseEg, Tell me if you have time.Mary asked the man who is smoking by the door.3) Negative wordEg, She was not listening all the time.He did not leave home because he was afraid of his wife.
