Grammatical and Lexical Ambiguity

AMBIGUITY OF MEANING

1. Grammatical and lexical ambiguity

2. Monosemantic and polysemantic words.

3. Primary and secondary meanings.

4. Basic and minor meanings.

Grammatical and Lexical Ambiguity

Ambiguity

A word is ambiguous if it has more than one sense or more than two synonyms that are not synonyms to each other. A sentence is ambiguous if it has two or more paraphrases which are not synonymous to each other. E.g. club - 1. Institution, group of people. 2. Thick stick made out of wood. These are two distinct senses and they are not synonymous to each other. There is ambiguity at a word level and ambiguity at a sentence level. Other examples of word level ambiguity are: bat, bear, level etc. these have at least two different I meanings.

Structure of grammatical ambiguity

There are several definitions about the structure of grammatical ambigu­ity. If a sentence has even one ambiguous word it has to be ambiguous or vice-versa. If a sentence hasn't got an ambiguous word then it is not ambiguous. E.g. A kind young man helped me to cross the street; kind could be a type of something or nice. While cross one can also be angry with somebody or mad at somebody. There are two ambiguous words in this sentence-Агшй? and cross which are homonyms (the same form but different meaning) but in this context they are very explicit in the meaning.

E.g. I observed John in the garden.

This sentence hasn't got ambiguous words but is itself ambiguous. It can be either: / was in the garden observing John or John was in the garden and I observed him. Another definition of ambiguity is that all the sentences that contain an ambiguous word are ambiguous. Some sentences that contain an ambiguous word may be ambiguous or not. The right definition of ambiguity is: some sentences that contain ambiguous words are ambiguous and some are not. Some sentences which do not contain an ambiguous word are ambiguous and some are not. The sentences that contain no ambiguous words and are still ambiguous are called structural grammatical ambiguity. E.g. Visiting relatives can be a nuisance where visiting can either be relatives that visit or to visit relatives.

Ambiguity at a syntactic level.

e.g. I saw her duck -I.I saw a duck belonging to her (as a noun). 2.1 saw her lower her head (as a verb).

Referential Versatility

There are some words that derive their meaning from the context and have no meaning of their own if isolated. E.g. here, there, how or then, I, you, me, etc. They should not be mixed with ambiguity.

Lexical ambiguity normally comprises both homonymy and polysemy.

Homonymy means different lexical meaning with the same form. It is a sense relation that occurs with items which share the form (have the same form) but have different sense (meaning) that are not related to each other, they are totally different and distinct in meaning.

Polysemy is a lexical phenomenon where two lexemes have the same form and different but related sense. They have something in common, e.g.:

iron 1. Metal. 2. Instrument made out of metal.

fork 1. Instrument for eating 2. A rode that branches in two paths resem- bling a fork;

but: pupil 1. A young student 2. Part of the eye.

The first two examples were examples of polysemy while the third one is an example of homonymy. The meanings of the third one are different and unrelated but have common origin and during the time they drifted apart in meaning. Therefore a word should be defined synchronically because one can never be sure of the etymology of the word, e.g. mouth 1. Part of a face 2. Part of a river where it touches the sea.

The Origin of Homonymy

89 % of the homonyms are monosyllabic lexemes, the origin of which is due to the monosyllabic analytic nature of English vocabulary (short words developed different meaning).

There are two main sources of homonymy:

1. Convergent nature of the homonymy where two words that have the
same form, e.g. OE gesund - healthy - sound (safe and sound).

OE sund - swimming - sound (straits)

Lat. Sonus - sound (sense detected by the ears).

This shows that three distinct forms ended up in one form.

2. Divergent nature of homonvmy occurs when the words have one
common etymological source but during the course of time their meaning split
or diverged. E.g.; pupil - a young student,. pupil - part of the eye. What hap­
pened with this word is that the forms survived but there was semantic disinte­
gration.

Patterned Homonymy

Lexical items that are the same in form share the same elements of mean­ing but belong to different speech class and they are patterned hornonyms. Usually they have different grammatical categories, e.g. act could be a noun or a verb. In the sentence “I think that this could be good” that is a conjunction while in “That man over there” that is a demonstrative.

Partial homonyms

These are items with a different meaning but in one of their word forms they share the form and can be homonyms. E.g. axis (singular) - axes (plural); axe (s) - axes (p). These two function as homonyms only in their plural form. E.g. but (conj.), butt - end of a cigarette. Used as verbs these two can be in sentences such as: Don't but me or He butted me all the time and He butted his cigarettes fended them/ The last two examples are partial homonyms.

Homophony

Homophons as a case of homonymy, i.e. different forms have different meaning and are pronounced identically. E.g. buy, by and bye; night - knight or you to -you too.

Homography

Homographs have the same spelling but different pronunciation, e.g. tear (n) - tear (v); lead (n) - lead (v).

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