Ambiguity In English And Chinese--A Contrastive Study

Ambiguity is a pervasive feature of language, and a reflection of language universals. Of course, everything has two sides. So does language. Besides the general characters, each language has its specific characters. Since different languages possess different structures (phonetic, lexical, grammatical) and different nations have different language habits and modes of thinking, there inevitably exist different types of ambiguity in different languages, so we find it highly necessary to make a contrastive study of ambiguity among them.English and Chinese, according to the language family they are in, are not akin to each other. One belongs to Indo-European language family, the other Sino-Tibetan. Consequently the language structures are quite different. However, due to the prosperity of contrastive linguistics and the necessity of language teaching and translation, it is possible to explore into the similarity and difference of these two languages, which will help to improve English teaching and Chinese teaching as a foreign language.This dissertation aimed at a contrastive study of the ambiguity in English and Chinese By adopting on observing and analyzing method, we hope to find out the similarity and difference in ambiguity between these two languages. We will also discuss the application of the contrastive study to foreign language teaching and translation.There are five parts in the dissertation. Part I is about the study of ambiguity in English and Chinese in the past and the scope of this dissertation. Part II describes the basic types of ambiguity in the two languages in detail. Part III contrasts the basic types of ambiguity in these two languages. PartIV discusses the application of the contrastive study of ambiguity to language teaching and translation. Part V is the conclusion. Emphasis is laid on Part II and Part III.This dissertation departs at a pure language level. It is confined not in a given context and environment (comparatively speaking), which contain rich information in communication. In order to contrast the ambiguity in English and Chinese, we, first of all, have to address the main types of ambiguity both in English and Chinese. We find that in English there are many kinds of classification about ambiguity. However, most of the classifications are derived from the sources which cause ambiguity. The classification accepted widely by most English researchers is the two-kind classification: lexical and grammatical (syntactical/structural) ambiguity. For convenience sake, we divide ambiguity in English into three kinds: lexical, grammatical, and semantically structural ambiguity. This kind of classification is based on Qu Shude's classification in his Ambiguity in English, but we have some amendments to it. Among these three kinds of ambiguity, grammatical ambiguity is very common. As English is an inflected language, grammatical ambiguityexists in large numbers. Semantically structural ambiguity is the most complicate, and it is often3mixed with the other two, especially with lexical ambiguity. So sometimes, it is hard to say what kind of ambiguity it belongs to. Some scholars think that they are the same things. However, we describe them separately for two reasons: One is that we want to give emphasis on these two kinds of ambiguity from different angles; the other is that we find it convenient for us to have a contrast between them. In Chinese, the classification of ambiguity is innumerous. Some scholars separate it from the unit in which the ambiguity appear, such as word, phrase, and sentence. Generally speaking, the study of ambiguity belongs to the semantic study. According to the linguistic typology, Chinese is an analytical language. So we think this is not a complete classification. For convenience sake, we adopt Shi Anshi's classification. He claims that there are two kinds of ambiguity, lexical ambiguity and combinational ambiguity. The latter can be classified into two sub-kinds, grammatical and semantically structural ambiguity. This classification is si...