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对英语中歧义的初步研究 三台县塔山中学 刘彦宏 中文摘要:在我们日常生活的交流中,经常会因为个人的语言能力及用语的不 同而产生歧义,导致不同的结果。汉语作为我们的母语都能产生很多不同的歧义, 正如每种语言都会产生歧义,英语也不会例外。本文将简单的叙述歧义的含义及 歧义的主要种类:语法歧义、词汇歧义及语音歧义,并在最后讲述歧义在英语教 学中的启示和在语言运用中的作用。从而使我们在以后的交际中能更准确的理解 对话的意思。 关键字:歧义;语法歧义;词汇歧义;语音歧义;英语教学 A Preliminary Study on Ambiguity in English Liu Yanhong from Tashan Middle school English Abstract: we often misunderstand others’ meanings for personal linguistic ability resulting in many ambiguities in our daily life. As our native language, Chinese, also lead to different ambiguities. Because every kind of language would bring ambiguity, English is no exception. This thesis aims to describe ambiguity from its definition and its classifications: grammatical ambiguity; lexical ambiguity; phonetic ambiguity. At the end of the essay, I will touch on the revelation in English teaching and the function in linguistic use. In a word, the intention of this paper is to help us have a better understanding of ambiguity and comprehend the conversation more accurate in communication. Key words:Ambiguity; grammatical ambiguity; lexical ambiguity; phonetic ambiguity; English teaching Contents Introduction…………………………………………………………………………4 Chapter one The Brief Introduction of Ambiguity………………………………5 1.1 The definition of ambiguity…………………………………………………5 1.2 Classification of ambiguity………………………………………………….6 Chapter two Grammatical Ambiguity……………………………………………6 2.1 The definition of grammatical ambiguity……………………………………6 2.2 The structure of transitive verb and its object………………………………..6 2.3 The conjunctive word “and” ………………………………………………...7 2.4 Adverbial or Attributive modifier in a dangling way………………………...7 Chapter three Lexical Ambiguity………………………………………………....8 3.1 The definition of Lexical Ambiguity……………………………………..8 3.2 The ambiguity aroused by polysemy……………………………………..8 3.3 The ambiguity aroused by perfect Homonym……………………………9 Chapter four Phonetic Ambiguity………………………………………………...10 4.1 The definition of Phonetic Ambiguity…………………………………....10 4.2 The ambiguity aroused by Homophones…………………………………10 4.3 The ambiguity aroused by different breath groups and different intonation 4.4 The ambiguity aroused by different stress……………………………….12 Chapter five The Function of Ambiguity in English Teaching and Linguistic Use 5.1 The revelation in English teaching …………………………………………..12 5.2 The function in linguistic use………………………………………………...13 Conclusion …………………………………………………………………………...14 Notes………………………………………………………………………………….14 Bibliography………………………………………………………………………….15 Acknowledgements…………………………………………………………………..15 Introduction Ambiguity is a common linguistic phenomenon existing in every language and on every linguistic level. It can be divided into two groups: linguistic ambiguity and non-linguistic ambiguity. A speaker’s speech ability, the way of expressing or interference from communication, can cause non- linguistic. And non-linguistic ambiguity doesn’t relate much to a language itself. Whereas linguistic ambiguity can’t be avoided, for it has much connection with a language, such as the polysemia of lexeme, syntax and the not-strictly restricted context. Since that ambiguity exists in every language, it must be received worldwide attention. As we all know, many different linguistic schools, both domestic and abroad, have studied for many years on the level of phonology, lexis, syntax and in the field of pragmatics, from their own particular perspectives, which have obtained many distinguished achievements. Abroad linguistic scholars’ research: The generative grammar about deep structure and surface structure by Chomsky (1965) gives a forceful explanation to ambiguous structure. But it has no way to deal with ambiguity whose deep structure is the same as surface one. Leech defined ambiguity from the perspective of semantics: ambiguity is a sentence with two or more propositions (1982:112). He took the sentence” Hugo is going to draw a cart” for example. He thought it was ambiguous because it had two different propositions: (1) Hugo is drawing (= pulling) a cart (2) Hugo is drawing a picture of a cart. Hipkiss pointed out that it was the different relationship between one word and other words that led to ambiguity. For example, I saw the ship with the telescope is ambiguous because the phrase” with the telescope” has two grammatical relationships with its pervious part. (1) With the telescope acts as an adverbial of manner (2) with the telescope acts as an attribute modifying the object ship (1995:35-36). In china, many researchers have also paid special attention to ambiguity. Shen Jiaxuan (1985) analyzed English ambiguity on its classification and formation from the perspective of polysemy, part of speech, grammar relationship, semantic relationship and so on. Wang xijie (1993) distinguished ambiguity from polysemy and pointed out that polysemy belonged to language which was static, while ambiguity belonged to parole which was dynamic. He also thought that ambiguity had close connection with the knowledge, education, hobby and experience, intention of information transformation. Liu Ruchang, Li Manjue (1993) studied ambiguity on the level of phonology, lexis and syntax. They thought that phonological ambiguity was caused by liaison, intonation, stress and length of pronunciation, lexical ambiguity was caused by polysemy and homonymy, syntactic ambiguity was due to the same surface structure but two or more different deep structure. Qiu Shude (1998), the author of English Ambiguity, divided ambiguity into five types: lexical ambiguity, phonological ambiguity, semantic ambiguity, grammar ambiguity and pragmatic ambiguity and studied ambiguity systematically. He also proved that ambiguity was not only negative but also positive.① From what are said above, we can know though ambiguity has been generated animated discussion in various linguistic areas, its study is not enough. In our daily life, we often misunderstand others’ intention for personal linguistic ability. The reasons of writing this essay are the following ones: (1) although I have learnt English at least ten years, I still can’t understand some sentences’ meaning well, which I usually misapprehend the ideas in reading. So I want to know more knowledge about ambiguity, then comprehend English meaning better. (2) During learning linguistic courses, I find I like this course, being eager to know more about linguistic knowledge. (3) In the process of English teaching, teacher always remind students of avoiding ambiguity. Thus, maybe some students recite the standard answers; they are not aware of the reasons of the ambiguity and so on. We should let the students analyze the ambiguity. The whole thesis is divided into five parts: part 1 is the introduction about researches in domestic and abroad and the reasons of writing the thesis. Part 2 describes the brief introduction of ambiguity from its definition and classification. Part 3 is the body of the essay which focuses on the three types of classification of ambiguity: grammar ambiguity, lexical ambiguity, phonetic ambiguity. Part 4 is the function of ambiguity on English teaching and linguistic use. Part 5 is a conclusion which makes a summary of the ambiguity in this thesis. Chapter one The Brief Introduction of Ambiguity 1.1 The definition of ambiguity Ambiguity is a common characteristic property of human language institute. Many people know the word –ambiguity and can realize the ambiguity phenomenon, but few people are able to clarify the definition of ambiguity exactly. What is ambiguity? In the oxford dictionary(page 50), it has the following meanings: (1) [U] the state of having more than one possible meaning(2) [C] a word or a statement that can be understood in more than one way (3) [U/C] the state of being difficult to understand or explain because of involving many different aspects Although it is not necessary to point out whether is an uncountable noun or a countable noun, we can conclude that ambiguity is an expression, which have one or more explanations in a sentence or of a word, etc and the different interpretations are not contradictory and repetitive of each other. Another explanation: an ambiguous sentence is usually of doubtful meaning because it can be interpreted in more than one way or many other ways Many linguistic scholars also have discussed this topic from different angles of linguistics and have obtained several definitions. Now, let us see some definitions of some famous linguistic researchers: from Chomsky’s point of view, a sentence has two levels of structure: deep structure and surface structure. In his transformational grammar, there are two phrase-structure ambiguity and deep-structure ambiguity, for phrase-structure and deep-structure respectively. For example: (1) they are flying kites. Flying could be analyzed as either a part of the verb or an adjective that modifies kites, which causes phrase-structure ambiguity. (2) Visiting relatives can be a nuisance. It is ambiguous, because this single sentence is derived from two distinct deep structures. So this sentence may be paraphrased roughly as when you visit relatives, it is a nuisance or when relatives visit, they are a nuisance.② 1.2 Classification of ambiguity As far as linguistics is concerned, ambiguity is a common linguistic phenomenon existing in every language and on every linguistic level. The scope of linguistics includes phonetics, phonology, morphology, syntax, pragmatics, sociolinguistics, psycholinguistics and applied linguistics. It is not strange that ambiguity exists in every areas of linguistics, such as phonetic ambiguity, syntax ambiguity, pragmatic ambiguity, psycholinguistic ambiguity. In fact, apart from the level of linguistic aspect, ambiguity can be found in speaker’s intention: potential ambiguity, actual ambiguity and hearer’s reaction: latent ambiguity, activated ambiguity. In this thesis, we will mainly focus on the linguistic level from three types of ambiguity. They are grammatical ambiguity, lexical ambiguity and phonetic ambiguity. Chapter Two Grammatical Ambiguity 2.1 The definition of grammatical ambiguity Grammatical ambiguity is also called syntax ambiguity, which is the most complicated one, to some extent. Paul Robert said: “In the light of most situations, ambiguity produces unintentionally. It is so negligent during using the sentences that some signs, which are able to make sentences clear, can’t put into those sentences.” in his English Sentence Structure (Zhou Liren, 1997:6) Another person, Wu Qianguang (1995:199)thought: “Grammatical ambiguity is generated by having different understanding to the syntax structure in a sentence. In general, grammatical ambiguity is aroused by the different abilities of using and apprehending sentence structure. We can interpret the causes of this phenomenon from the following examples in detail. 2.2 The structure of transitive verb and its object Since we learn English, we all know transitive verb must follow an object. At the same time, some transitive verbs are allowed to have two objects after it. For instance: George found Tom an experienced engineer. In this sentence, two nouns Tom and an experienced engineer are behind the transitive verb found, so there are two meanings (1) George thought Tom himself is an experienced engineer. (2) George found an experienced teacher for Tom. 2.3 The structure conjunctive word “and” In terms of the meaning, and is a very simple word. It is just used to connect such sentence compositions as subjects, predict verbs and so on. But in the syntax level, this word can affect the hearer’s different reactions. Look at the sentence: Mary and Jim are married. This sentence we can analyze from two aspects: on one hand, if we all know Mary and Jim are in love, it can be interpreted as Mary and Jim got married, that is to say, they consist of the members of a common family; on the other hand, if Mary and Jim don’t fall in love with each other, they are just someone respectively, it can be explained as both Mary and Jim are married, they are two families. The former situation “and” is connect with two nouns, the sentence is a simple sentence; the latter one can be seen a compound sentence. 2.4 Adverbial or attributive modifiers in a dangling way 2.4.1 Suspension Adverbial modifier Adverbial is different from a common modifier with its character of sentence element. It is divided into Adjunct, Disjunct and Conjunct. Here, we mainly discuss the Adjunct modifier in a dangling way. E.g. the students who watched the program frequently praised it. In this condition, it is difficult to say frequently modify watched the program or praised. Consequently, ambiguity appears: one meaning is that the students who often watch the program praised it. The other meaning is the students who watched the program praised it frequently. 2.4.2 Hanging attributive modifier Usually, attributes modify nouns or noun phrases. We know in most circumstances, the attribute modifies its antecedent is explicit. However, some situations attributive modifier also can produce ambiguity. June loves the pen on the desk which she bought yesterday. At this expression, which she bought yesterday is an attributive clause, but we aren’t able to distinguish it modifies the pen or the desk. Therefore, two interpretations coming: (1) June loves the pen her buying yesterday, which is put on the desk. (2) June loves the desk her buying yesterday and there is a pen on the desk. Chapter Three Lexical Ambiguity 3.1 The definition of lexical ambiguity Before analyzing lexical ambiguity,we need to savvy something about lexical meaning. Grammatical and lexical are two main kinds of word meaning, but lexical meaning is different from grammatical meaning: first, the lexical meaning of a word is the same in all the forms of one and the same word while grammatical meaning varies from one word-form to another; second, every word has a different meaning, whereas the grammatical meaning is the same in identical sets of individual forms of different words. At the same time, lexical meaning may be subdivided into denotative meaning, connotative meaning, social meaning and effective meaning. ③ Now, lexical meaning exists so many kinds of meaning that lexical ambiguity must be complicated phenomenon. Hence, “because of having different understandings to a word in a sentence that arises lexical ambiguity” Wu Qianguang(1995:199) said. We are aware of having different and many reasons of producing lexical ambiguity, while we mainly talk over two kinds of them. 3.2 The ambiguity aroused by polysemy From many people’s point of view, the definition of polysemy is that a single word has several senses. From the original perspective, the word polysemy is of Greek origin (Gk polys, much+ sema, and meaning). It has been defined as” …A term used in semantic analysis to refer to a lexical item which has a range of different meanings.”(Crystal 1980:274) Since a word can be explained many various meanings that ambiguity is easy to meet with. Some people said if we put the word into a certain context, the lexical ambiguity can be avoided. In a certain circumstance, some words can explain its accurate meaning, but some situations its ambiguity can not be eliminated, which causes lexical ambiguity. Next, let us see some examples. 3.2.1 Nouns Mr. Right gave me a ring yesterday. As ring has two meanings at least: (1) a piece of jewellery that you wear on your finger, consisting of a circular band of gold, silver, etc. sometimes decorated with precious stones (2) equal to telephone, give somebody a ring can be interpreted as to make a telephone call to somebody. Hence, in this sentence, we can not understand clearly: whether Mr. Right proposed to me or he made a telephone call to me. 3.2.2 Preposition Preposition belongs to functional word category, which is often meaningless. Nevertheless, in some cases, prepositions are also can produce ambiguity. The picture is on the television. On as a preposition, it has the explanations: above something and touching part of a surface; in or into a position covering forming part of a surface. We interpret the sentence as (1) the picture is put on the television, just as an ornament. (2) This picture presented in television news. 3.2.3 Pronoun Pronoun is a varied closed-class word with nominal function, which includes personal pronoun, possessive pronoun, reflexive pronoun, reciprocal pronoun, demonstrative pronoun, interrogative pronoun, relative pronoun and indefinite pronoun. At this point, we want to confine to personal pronoun---“you”. It can be regarded as either subjective case and second person or indefinite personal pronoun. The meaning of the former is the right person (maybe one or more) whom the speaker talks with. The latter one is anybody around the speaker. Let us image we are in a noisy situation, two people are talking something important. Suddenly, one of them said the following sentence loudly. His intention is to remind his patter of being careful. You should be in a low voice. Maybe some people will stop talking and keep silent; the person who is talking with him also will pause. It is the reason that all of the people misunderstand his word “you”. Everyone thinks that word refers to himself. 3.3 The ambiguity aroused by perfect homonym Perfect homonyms refer to word identical in sound and spelling but different in meaning. Perfect homonyms like twins: they are the same face, the same close, but different names and identities, if they haven’t something typical character, few people can tell one from another. Obviously, it is no wonder that people often misapprehend when perfect homonyms appear in a sentence. For instance: The tourist passed port at midnight. Port is homonymy. When it is the meaning of harbor, the whole sense of the sentence is the tourist went through the harbor at midnight. As the meaning of a kind of grape wine, the implication is the tourist passed the grape wine at midnight. If there is no certain circumstance, we can’t decide what meaning it is. Different people have different understanding. Ambiguity appears automatically. 3.4 The ambiguity for the different usage between American English and British English American English and British English are the same origin at thousands of years ago. Since American had freed from Britain’s invasion, they tried to research the language of their own. On the publication of the American dictionary, compiled by J John, American thought they had their own language, which is distinguished from Britain English. In fact, American English preserves the intrinsic quality of British English, while there are many discrepancies on the lexical meaning between them. Thus, ambiguity is not a rare thing. Green is an engineer. In term of this utterance, “engineer” can cause ambiguity between American and English. Because the word has two meanings in American English: (1) a person whose job involves designing and building engines, machines, roads, bridge, etc.(2)be equal to engineer driver, a person whose job is driving a railway. Whereas in Britain English it has only one meaning that is the former one in American English. So it is difficult for American and English to judge what Green’s job is without a certain circumstance. Another inserting thing happened to Charles Dickens, a famous writer in Britain. One day, he was invited to give a lecture in America. At the beginning of the speech, he said”I can see many homely faces here. ” after his words, the situation became disordered: some people left with anger; some were in a resentful color suddenly. What is the reason? Because the ambiguity of “homely”. Dickens wanted to express his sincere intention to the audiences, but Americans thought Dickens insulted them. “Homely” is regarded as devout and truehearted in Britain, while it is considered as ugly in America. Chapter four Phonetic Ambiguity 4.1 The definition of phonetic ambiguity Phonetics is defined as the study of the phonetic medium of language; it is concerned with all the sounds that occur in the world languages. Learning phonetic symbols well is important to learn a foreign language well. If you don’t learn phonetic symbols well, you may make many jokes or other ambiguities in communication. General speaking, phonetic ambiguity is caused by pronouncing the different words with the identical or similar pronunciation in communication. In addition, phonetic ambiguity is often seen in oral speech. 4.2 The ambiguity aroused by homophones Words identical in sound but different in spelling and meaning are called homophones. We usually meet with such examples as air, heir; bear, bare; dear, deer; pair, pear; son, sun; complement, compliment; ensure, insure; stationary, stationery, etc. ④it is hard to differentiate between son and sun when you hear a sentence including one of them. Here, giving you a specific example: ---- When does the baker follow his trade? ---- Whenever he wants to knead the dough. It is used “need” and “knead”, a pair of homophones, to answer the question, but the hear must be puzzled. Additionally, “dough” is a polysemy, this sentence adds more complicated. Hears may comprehend that the baker start his business from kneading the wheat flour or the baker do his trade when he need money. In English, homophones are too numerous to mention individually, we should use them carefully. Another kind of case is the influence of liaison. Instances :(1) he is eating an ice cake. Some people would hear he is eating a nice cake. (2)Did you get a plate? People may interpret: Did you get up late. 4.3 The ambiguity aroused by different breath groups and different intonation In term of an identical sentence, different people have different breath groups that result in different meanings. Of course, some times speaker wants to play tricks on somebody deliberately or because of something else, he will stop at an inappropriate place. Theory is good, while practice is better. Some examples can say it clearly. (1) John said Nicole is a fool. We can stop this sentence at such two different locations as: John said/Nicole is a fool and John/ said Nicole/ is a fool. The first can be considered as Nicole is a fool; the second one can be regarded as John is a fool. (2) Those who bought quickly made a profit. It can be analyzed as those who bought/ quickly made a profit or those who bought quickly/ made a profit. Explaining the previous one, we know all the people who bought it made a profit at a soon time. Seeing the latter, we receive the information is that the people who bought it fast got a lot of money. (3) Six plus four multiplies by eight and minus three. We know a person who is good at math, will give us various answers. Because the different breath groups. The next utterances can explain it: six plus four/ multiplies eight/ and minus three. The result of it is seventy-seven. On the other hand, with the result thirty-five, for six plus/ four multiplies eight/and minus three. So if a speaker said a same sentence with identical words and intonation, but different breath groups, different people are able to interpret various meanings. Intonation plays an important role in the delivery of meaning in almost every language, especially in a language like English. Four basic types of intonation in English: the falling tone, the rising tone, the fall-rise tone and the rise-fall tone. The first three are used the most frequently. When spoken in different tones, the sequence of words may have different meanings. General speaking, the falling tone indicates that what is said is a straight-forward, matter-of-fact statement, the rising tone often makes a question of what is said, and the fall-rise tone often indicates that there is an implied message in what is said. ⑤Look at the same sentence with different intonation saying it. That is not the book he wants. (1)′ That is ′ not the ′ book he ˋ wants. This version is spoken in the falling-tone, it is simply states a fact, i.e., the book in question is not the one he wants. (2)′That is ′not the ′book he ˊwants. It is said in the rising tone indicates uncertainty on the part of the speaker; he is asking the question: is that not the book he wants? (3) ′That is 、not the 、book he ˊwants. Spoken in the fall-rise tone indicates that apart from what is said literally, there is an implied message. i.e., besides telling the listener that the book in question is not the one he wants, the speaker implies that there is some other book he wants. We often meet with some people said some sentence in a strange intonation, which is different from its normal intonation. From the above, we know the reason why he said like that. Therefore, we should pay more attention to the intonation in our conversation. Listening to the implied meanings carefully. 4.4 The ambiguity aroused by different stress Stress is divided into word stress and sentence stress. The place of the stress in English can distinguish meaning. For example, s shift of stress may change the part of speech of a word from a noun to a verb although its spelling remains unchanged. The noun has the stress on the first syllable and the corresponding verb has the stress on the second syllable. ⑥This is exemplified in such words as aˋttribute n. ---ˋ attribute v. , ˋincrease n. ---inˋcrease v. , ˋproduce n. --- proˋduce v. etc. Similar alteration of stress also occurs between a compound noun and a phrase consisting of the same elements. In general, the stress of English compounds is fallen on the first element, and the second element received the secondary stress. For instances: the compound word White House consists of two elements---white and house. In pronunciation it, we stress the first element white. The whitehouse refers to an office place of American president and its government. If the stress falls on the word house, the compound becomes the noun phrase white house. As it is a noun phrase with house as its head noun and white a modifier. A similar difference in stress Pattern and meaning can be found in such pairs as greenhouse and green house, blackbird and black bird. Sentence stress refers to the relative force given to the components of a sentence. If a sentence with different stress, it also has different meanings, which can be aroused ambiguity. Imagining in a meeting, an audience doesn’t hear the speaker’s contents asking a question with the utterance: I beg your pardon? Like his situation, the stress ought to fall on beg, but he falls on your. The speaker feels puzzled after his question thinking: why do you ask me to forgive you? Chapter five the Function of Ambiguity in English Teaching and Linguistic Use 5.1 The revelation in English teaching Ambiguity is common and complicated phenomenon, people are very easy to misunderstand in their communication. In our teaching process, students often ask some questions because of ambiguity. Even sometimes teachers can’t give them the explicit answer. Language is used to communicate with each other, but communication fails to achieve because the defects of the language users themselves or the structure of language itself. In order to avoid the possibility of causing ambiguity, we should do something about it. From a teacher’ perspective, teacher ought to help student establish the concept of ambiguity in a system way. First, on syntax structure level, let them know: combination of limited sentence could lead to ambiguity when they make a sentence. Hence, they should be careful when use a word or modifiers. Second, on lexical level, polyseny and perfect homonyms are the main reason to cause lexical ambiguity. Students should accumulate their vocabulary and remember the various meanings of it as many as they can. Third, in term of phonetic, teaching the students to learn the phonetics well. Let them practice the pronunciations accurately in order to pronounce the right syllables. In addition, they should practice the right stress, intonation, and liaison, etc. Every coin has two sides. On the one hand, we try to avoid the ambiguity in our communication. On the other hand, we also can use ambiguity to make humors. In all, the teachers and the students ought to pay attention to not only the linguistic level, but also the context. 5.2 The function of ambiguity in linguistic use Ambiguity exists in all kinds of linguistic areas; its functions are also found in many fields. In this thesis, we talk about its function in linguistic use from the advertisements. The staple purpose of businessmen is to make more money. In order to make their produces have more influence on the customers, they have to put some money on advertising. How do they let consumers remember their advertisements firmly, and then buy their produces? Ambiguity is the best choice, especially the lexical ambiguity which has the characters of interesting, seductive and using language artistically. 1. interesting In advertisements, interesting can obtain humor effect and impress people. Seven days without 7-up make one weak. Those are the messages of a popular drink--7-up in America, while its name is 7-xi in China. In this sentence, 7 days correspond to 7-up, which is right to a week. It just so happens that weak and week are homonyms. And one can be interpreted as anybody or a week. To sum up, the information of it wants to tell people: don’t drink 7-up a day, you will be in poor heath; drink 7-up everyday; you will be full of energy. 2. seductive Seduction is showed vividly in many successful advertisements. Good message can lead consumers to associate it to the produce and stimulate desires to buy their goods or service. A travel agency gives its advertisement is: More sun and air for your son and heir. It attracts the parents’ love to their sons or heirs. If they are to go to travel, they may plan to go with this travel agency. Because sun, son and air, heir are two homophones. Parents get the information: here has enough sun and fresh air which are good to your heir—son. Every parent wants their heirs are in good heath, they must choose this travel agency. 3. using language artistically Both literature and art are included in a good message. An advertisement delivers the information about its goods, at the same time it should have a good communication with consumers’ mentality, which is caused their shopping desires. Coke refreshes you like no other can. In the advertisement of coca cola, can plays an important role. Can is regarded as tin, this message deliver that coke refreshes you like no other can (can refreshes you); can as a modal verb, it is Coke refreshes you like no other (drinks)can (refreshes you). Conclusion In the preceding chapters, a varied of issues concerning ambiguity have been studied. Based on the previous analysis and discussion, the conception of ambiguity can be roughly summarized as follows. It is really hard to make a well-pleasing and comprehensive explanation of ambiguity that an ambiguous sentence is usually of doubtful meaning because it can be interpreted in more than one way or many other ways. With the purpose of getting a clearer understanding about ambiguity, the author writes the essay into three parts: brief introduction of ambiguity, classification of ambiguity, the function of ambiguity in English teaching and linguistic use. The three ways of classifying ambiguity are grammatical ambiguity, lexical ambiguity and phonetic ambiguity. On grammatical level, we talk about some typical phenomenon. Of lexical ambiguity, we choose to analyze polysemy, perfect homonym and the different usage between American English and British English. Lexical ambiguity is the most common topic in the field. About the phonetic ambiguity, it is often seen in oral speech. From the homophones, different breath groups and intonation and various stresses, we get to know the important role of phonetics and phonology. In English teaching process, teachers always try to tell students to avoid ambiguity. Some times we need to avoid ambiguity, but some times we also need ambiguity to affect people or cause a certain humor phenomenon to moderate the embarrassing situation. This thesis refers to the function of it in advertisement. In many advertisements, designers make the message impressive by using the advantages of ambiguity. Ambiguity is a large category and a common phenomenon. Although many linguistic researchers have done many studies on it, it is not enough. This thesis just touches on some fields of it. Notes:①,② 漆慧,歧义的语用功能研究[D],东南大学,2006 年 ③张韵斐,现在英语词汇学概论,出版,2006,p97 ④张韵斐,现在英语词汇学概论,北京师范大学出版,2006, p116 ⑤Dai Weidong, He Zhaoxiong, a new concise course on linguistics for students of English, shanghai foreign language education press, 2002, p30 ⑥Dai Weidong, He Zhaoxiong, a new concise course on linguistics for students of English, shanghai foreign language education press, 2002, p28 Bibliography: Dai Weidong, He Zhaoxiong, a new concise course on linguistics for students of English, shanghai foreign language education press, 2002 Kess, F. J. & Hoppe, A. R. Ambiguity in Psycholinguistics [M]. John Benjamin’s Pub Co., 1981. Kaplan, R. Cultural thought patterns in intercultural education [J]. Language Learning, 1966. Zhang Zhenbang, Zhang Yuexiang, A new English grammar coursebook, 2007 Chomsky, N. Aspects of the theory of syntax [M].Cambridge: Mass.M.I.T.Press,1965 Hipkiss, Robert A. Semantics. 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