Investigation Into Ambiguity By Scope Of Negation

The scope of negation is an important part of the negation theory and ambiguity by scope of negation is a common phenomenon in English, which often brings about misunderstanding and confusion in both English learning and daily communication. The best way to solve the problem is to scientifically explore the root of ambiguity and accordingly process it properly. The thesis aims at an investigation into ambiguity by scope of negation and an objective description of the common features of Chinese students processing ambiguity by scope of negation. The study starts with the relevant literature on scope of negation and different types of ambiguities caused by scope of negation. Based on it a thorough investigation of how students recognize and process ambiguous negative sentences is conducted among both college students and middle school students. The data are collected by means of a translation test and a questionnaire. Through careful quantitative analysis of the data, it can be concluded that there exist some common features for students to recognize the scope Of negation and process the ambiguity by scope of negation. The preference of auxiliary negation, full negation, local negation, and focus on predicate for certain types of ambiguous negative sentences as well as the influence by different verbs used in the sentences and expressing habit of the Chinese language are observed in the study. Based on the study both suggestions for disambiguation and recommendations for future teaching and research are put forward.