The Ambiguity Of "NP1,NP2 Dou (?) V" Structure

The ambiguity in natural language is essentially a contradiction between meaning and form,and if the same form corresponds to different meanings,the form must be ambiguous.In the history of modern linguistics,the issue of ambiguity has always been a breakthrough point of a new rising linguistic school attacking the traditional position.The study of this phenomenon can be described as spectacular,involving a wide range of contents and diverse research perspectives.In discussing the issue of ambiguity,Zhu Dexi(1980)pointed out that the real reason why some sentences are ambiguous is that there are ambiguous structures in these sentences.Therefore,he advocated the use of “ambiguous structure”.After that,scholars have conducted a series of studies on many ambiguous structures in modern Chinese,most of which are “VP + NP1 +De(?)+ NP2”,“V + V”,“V + N”.Besides,linguists have also done a lot of researches on some of the structures associated with the adverb “Dou(?)”,including “Lian(?)……Dou(?)……”structure,“Ba(?)+ NP + Dou(?)+VP” structure and “Bi(?)+ NP + Dou(?)+VP” structure,but the ambiguity of “NP1,NP2 Dou(?)V” structure has almost been a blank space in ambiguity studies.And this structure is very common in modern Chinese,therefore,the author chooses this ambiguous structure “NP1,NP2 Dou(?)V” as the object of the study in this thesis.“NP1,NP2 Dou(?)V” structure can be ambiguous due to different semantic attribute and orientation of “Dou(?)”.However,in order to avoid the complication of the problem,the author does not focus on the ambiguity caused by the adverb “Dou(?)”.In this thesis,the author mainly discusses the ambiguity of “NP1,NP2 Dou(?)V” structure caused by the uncertainty of argument structure realization.The author firstly believes that “NP1,NP2 Dou(?)V” structure is a potential ambiguous structure,that is to say,not all sentences composed of “NP1,NP2 Dou(?)V” structure are ambiguous.Therefore,the author describes the semantic requirements of the ambiguity of “NP1,NP2 Dou(?)V” structure from three aspects of animacy of “NP”,valence of “V” and generalization of “NP”.Based on this,the author attempts to explain the ambiguousness of the structure from the perspective of information structure.The theories adopted in this thesis include: topicalization,argument structure theory and information structure theory.After the study,the author reaches the following conclusions:(1)“NP1,NP2 Dou(?)V” structure is a kind of double NP structure which is common in Mandarin.What makes the structure particularly special is that it has potential ambiguousness.(2)Whether “NP1,NP2 Dou(?)V” structure is ambiguous or not depends on the semantic characteristics and semantic orientations of “Dou(?)”,the semantic characteristics and reference attribute of NP,and the valence of the verb.(3)There are three conditions for the agent-patient ambiguity of “NP1,NP2 Dou(?)V” structure:(1)Both NP1 and NP2 must have the attribute of [+ animate].(2)The verb V must be a bivalent verb,usually a two-way verb.(3)NP1 cannot be a universal component.(4)All sentences composed of “NP1,NP2 Dou(?)V” structure are formed by topicalization.It is a mechanism of syntax that establishes an expression as the topic of a sentence or a clause by making NP1 or NP2 associated with the verb appear in the front of the sentence or clause.In this case,the syntactic realization and semantic role of NP1 shift from certainty to uncertainty,leading to the ambiguity of the structure.(5)As a means of pragmatics,topicalization plays a crucial role in the adjustment of information structure,but it sometimes can cause damage to the structural dependency of an SVO sentence.The structural dependency of topicalized elements weakens just because of the process — topicalization.The analysis and research of this ambiguous structure in this thesis can give people a deeper understanding of this structure,and help them find out the method to eliminate the ambiguity,leading to the facilitation of their communication.At the same time,the study can also provide a reference for the study of other ambiguous structures.And it is also helpful to Chinese teaching,especially teaching Chinese as a foreign language.