On English Ambiguity 英语专业本科毕业论文--.doc

On English Ambiguity 论英语中的歧义现象 Outline 1. Introduction ? 2. Theoretical Background 3. Classification of Ambiguity 3.1 Phonological Ambiguity 3.1.1 Intonation 3.1.2 Liaison 3.1.3 Homophony 3.2 Lexical Ambiguity 3.2.1 P olysemy 3.2.2 Homonymy 3.2.3 Historical Change 3.2.4 Dialectical Differences ? 3.3 Syntactic Ambiguity 3.3.1 Multiple Constituent Structures 3.3.2 Multiple Syntactic Functions 3.3.3 Ellipsis 3.4 Pragmatic Ambiguity 4. Approaches of Disambiguity 4.1 Adoption of Stress and Pause 4.2 Addition of Context 4.3 Utilization of Syntactic Structures 4.3.1 A lteration of Phrasal Order 4.3.2 Reorganization of Sentence 4.3.3 A ddition of Omitted Constituents 4.4 Replacement of Ambiguous Words 4.5 Utilization of Punctuation Marks 5. Conclusion ? Abstract: This paper mainly expounds the reasons of phonological, lexical, syntactic and pragmatic ambiguity, and puts forward five approaches of disambiguity in English: adoption of stress and pause, addition of language context, utilization of syntactic structure, replacement of words and utilization of punctuation marks. ? Key words: ambiguity; reasons; disambiguity; approaches ? 摘要： 本文从语音、词汇、句法以及语用四大因素入手，分析了英语中歧义句产生的原因；并在此基础上详细阐述了五种消歧的方法：运用重读、增设语境、利用句法结构、替代词语、利用标点符号。 ? 关键词： 歧义；原因；消歧；方法 ? 1. Introduction ? ? Ambiguity is a subtle but pervasive phenomenon in English. But as to what is ambiguity there are many versions. Chomsky hold that ambiguity occurs when an expression_r_r_r has grammatical structure and is semantically relational but its deep structure can be interpreted in two or more ways (1965:25). Yang Ping proposed that ambiguity is with various understandings or multi-meaning (2001:38). Cann stated “A sentence is said to be ambiguous whenever it can be associated with two or more different meanings.” (1993:8) All in all, ambiguity refers to the phenomenon that an equivocal sentence or expression_r_r_r can be understood in more than one way. On the basis of different definitions, the paper focuses on four