An outline of the study of English ambiguous sentences

An outline of the study of English ambiguous sentences

Abstract: In language communication, people often misunderstand because of ambiguity. Some people are good at using ambiguity to make witty remarks. From the perspective of clause law, this paper makes a syntactic analysis of ambiguous examples according to the types of ambiguity in order to avoid misunderstanding and give full play to the positive role of ambiguity.

Keywords: English ambiguous sentences; syntax

1 Types of English Ambiguity

In life, people express themselves mainly through pronunciation, intonation, mood, vocabulary and specific grammatical structure. Therefore, when people actually use language, they often have ambiguity in these aspects.

There are five common types of ambiguity in English:

The word (1) is ambiguous: Iwenttothebank.

(2) Different parts of speech: Pleasemakeherdressfast. (noun/verb);

(3) Different levels: [beautiful (little women's clothing)]/[(beautiful little women's clothing)];

(4) Different grammatical relations: Flyingplanescanbedangerous (attribute-head/predicate-object);

(5) Different semantic relations: shooting by hunters (hunters are agents/patients of shooting).

Polysemy and different semantic relations in ambiguous types belong to semantic category, so this paper will not discuss them in detail. This paper mainly discusses three types of ambiguity: different parts of speech, different levels and different grammatical relations.

2 Syntactic analysis of English ambiguity

2. 1 Parts of speech with different ambiguous types

Words belonging to different parts of speech are called concurrent words. If there are some words in a sentence, then the sentence belongs to different sentence patterns. This is the main reason for this type of ambiguity. For example:

They breathed a sigh of relief.

In this case, relieved can be understood as two parts of speech: adjective "relieved" and passive verb "relieved". Therefore, sentences belong to different sentence patterns. They felt relieved. (2) "They got help."

John was offended.

Similarly, offering in this example can be understood as two parts of speech: the adjective "angry" and the passive verb "offensive". Therefore, sentences belong to different sentence patterns. Translated as: ① "John is angry." ② "John was offended."

This type of ambiguity is easier to understand and identify, as long as we pay attention to the different meanings brought by different parts of speech.

2.2 Different levels of ambiguity types

Different structural levels mean different divisions of direct components. There are two typical types of ambiguity in English: partial correction and parallel partial correction. With the help of tree diagram, it is not very difficult to identify this ambiguity.

(1) partially positive type.

Deviation from the normal pattern is mainly caused by the different division of multiple modifiers and headwords.

For example, an old man's bike.

This example can be understood as an old man's car.

The tree diagram is:

(2) parallel type.

Coordinate deviation is mainly the ambiguity caused by the different division of the modification relationship between coordinate components and headwords.

Like oldmanandwomen.

This example can be understood as follows: the structural relationship between old men and old women is [old (manandwomen)];

This example can also be understood as: old people and women, their structural relationship is [(old people) and women].

Another example: Hisobjectisnottoeat.

This example can be understood as: his goal is not to eat. Its structural relationship is: his object [is (does not eat)].

This example can be understood as: his goal is not to eat. Its structural relationship is: his object [not (food)].

2.3 Different types of ambiguity in grammatical relations

The so-called grammatical relationship is the structural relationship of subject-predicate, predicate-object and deviation. Common ambiguity types caused by different grammatical relations mainly include:

(1) The confusion of predicate-object/centering, predicate-object structure and centering structure is one of the main types of structural ambiguity. A classic example can illustrate this point.

For example: Flyingplanescanbedangerous. The tree diagram is as follows:

The explanation of "Flyingplanes" in the example is an attributive-head structure, which can be understood as: "It is dangerous to fly a plane."

In the examples of China Paper Alliance and China Paper Alliance, Flyingplanes is interpreted as a predicate-object structure, which can be understood as: "It is very dangerous to fly a plane."

(2) Predicate-object/adverbial head.

The confusion between predicate-object structure and adverbial central structure can be illustrated by the following examples.

Example: Statistical research lasted for a whole year.

The tree diagram is:

In the example, studiesthewholeyear interprets "year-round research" as an adverbial-central structure, which can be understood as: "Statisticians conduct research all year round." China Literature Union

(3) Double object/object-complement/apposition/attribute-head.

Here are two examples to illustrate the ambiguity easily caused by these structural components.

For example, TheycalledJohnateacher

There are three understandings of this example:

First, when the relationship between John and the teacher is a double guest, it can be understood as: "They called a teacher for John."

Secondly, when John and ateacher are used as objects to complement the linguistic relationship in the example, they can be understood as: "They call John a teacher."

The tree diagram is:

In addition, the structural relationship between the attributive and the head and the relationship between the object and the complement can easily lead to ambiguity and confusion, which can be illustrated by the following examples.

John Hadab was stolen from the library.

This example can be understood as follows: stolenfromthelibrary can be the object complement of abook (had can be understood as relieving loss); Stolenfromthelibrary can also be an abook attribute (had can be understood as having).

3 Application of English Ambiguous Sentences

Ambiguity is just an objective language phenomenon, and its effect mainly depends on the application of language users. The application effects of English ambiguous sentences mainly include unconscious negative application and ingenious application.

Unconsciously using ambiguous sentences in daily life may bring some negative effects. In life, when we buy pork in the vegetable market, we often hear misunderstandings caused by ambiguity. A customer said, "Boss, how much is your pork? Boss, how much is your meat? The boss retorted, "Youarethepig. Poland is your freedom. " You are a pig, and this is your meat. There are two explanations for "yourpork" here: one is the pork owned by the boss; The second is to suggest that this pork is the boss's meat. English ambiguous sentences also have their ingenious uses. People often use the pun function of ambiguity to achieve rhetorical effects such as irony and humor in a certain context.

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