EC-CE Comparison And Translation Of Ambiguity From A Pragmatic Perspective

As a universal linguistic phenomenon, ambiguity is involved in each layer of linguistics. The ways to produce and eliminate ambiguity can be categorized into intra-lingual ones (phonology, grammar, semantics), and extra-lingual ones (pragmatics). Ambiguity is a breakthrough for the studies of Chinese grammar. It is primarily Zhao Yuanren, Zhu Dexi, and Lu Shuxiang who have proposed how to disambiguate in China. In the West, ambiguity can be traced back to the sophism of ancient Greek philosophy. But the category of pragmatic ambiguity was not explored until the 1970s. English and Chinese are governed by different rules and words, and their collocations are confined in different denotations and connotations, but both languages interpret ambiguity in contexts which are shared by the participants of communication. The exploration of this thesis starts from this standpoint— context.Based on the traditional static studies on ambiguity, this thesis expounds dynamic pragmatic ambiguity at great length. Ambiguities caused by language structure like phonological ambiguity, syntactic ambiguity and semantic ambiguity will be used or eliminated at the pragmatic level. On the other hand, dynamic pragmatic ambiguity can not be explained by the static means. Hence, this thesis is established in pragmatics. Expanding to dynamic pragmatic ambiguity means that each aspect of pragmatics may arouse ambiguity: the ambiguity of deixis, the ambiguity of indirect speech, the ambiguity of implicature, the ambiguity of presupposition, and the ambiguity of contextual restriction. Because of having some cognition in common, the ambiguities arising in the process of language use can be communicated. In cross-cultural pragmatics, however, it is difficult for the speaker of the target language to interpret the pragmatic ambiguity of source language, which is concerned with different national cultures. It is known that ambiguity plays a positive role as well as a negative role. This thesis is focused on the positive facet for the simple reason that it emphasizes the pragmatic functions of ambiguity.