AMBIGUITY IN LANGUAGE

If everything we know is viewed as a transition from something else, every experience must have a double meaning or for every meaning there must be two aspects. All meaning is only meaningful in reference to, and in distinction from, other meanings; there is no meaning in any stable or absolute sense. Meanings are multiple, changing, and contextual. SIGMUND FREUD

Language, being a system of communication, has a very delicate job to perform, particularly when it is being used by us humans. It does not merely communicate words as impersonal and isolated entities. Words, in their train bring a set of emotions, beliefs, customs, situations, circumstances etc and a particular state of mind. Words in fact communicate a whole personality and that’s why their correct usage has so much importance. But no language in the world has so far been able to claim that it is capable of communicating all that a human wants to communicate to another human. Despite the immense progress till the present age, miscommunication is rampant all across the globe. We often hear the expression, “oh! I find it difficult to express the way I feel” but even if we do express ourselves in the best possible manner, there will still be traces of some kind of ambiguity in our expression. Meanings have outnumbered the expressions throughout the ages.

Ambiguity can be defined as something that can be understood in two or more senses or ways. In other words, the term ambiguity applies where there is more than one deep structure to a given surface structure. Ambiguity can be caused due to a number of factors and that’s why there are different types of ambiguities. Two basic types of ambiguities are the lexical ambiguity and structural ambiguity but there are others as well. A brief explanation of these different types with examples is given below.

Lexical ambiguity: When homonyms can occur in the same position in utterances, the result is lexical ambiguity. In other words when the ambiguity is caused by a single word it is called the lexical ambiguity. Lexical ambiguity is by far the more common and its examples are found everywhere. For example, the word "deep" can mean profundity ("What you have said is very deep."), or it can be used to describe physical depth ("This hole is very deep”). In fact, almost any word has more than one meaning. "Note" = "A musical tone" or "A short written record." "Lie" = "Statement that you know it is not true" or "present tense of lay: to be or put yourself in a flat position." The word "strikes" can occur as either a verb meaning to hit or a noun meaning a refusal to work. Of course, the ambiguity is not likely to be sustained in a longer discourse. A following utterance explains whether a ‘bank’ means a place for depositing or withdrawing money or the side of a river. Quite often homonyms belong to different lexical categories and do not create ambiguity e.g. ‘seen’ is a form of verb ‘see’ while ‘scene’ is an unrelated noun. We can take the very word "ambiguity" itself. It can mean an indecision as to what you mean, an intention to mean several things, a probability that one or other or both of two things has been meant, and the fact that a statement has several meanings. Ambiguity also occurs because a longer linguistic form has a literal and a figurative sense e.g. ‘there’s a skeleton in our closet’ the underlined phrase in its figurative sense may mean an unfortunate event kept as family secret and is considered to be a single lexeme; with its literal sense, it is a phrase composed of many lexemes. Ambiguity tends to increase with frequency of usage.
Structural/syntactic ambiguity: Structural ambiguity may be in the surface structure of a sentence, clause or phrase i.e. words can cluster together in different possible constructions. It may also be in the deep structures i.e. one sequence of words may have more than one interpretation, generally because the rules of sentence construction allow ellipses i.e. the deletion of what is understood. Examples of surface ambiguity may be in sentences like “ John and Mary or Pat will go.” This sentence can mean “ [john] and [Mary or Pat]” or it can mean “[john and Mary] or [Pat].” Similarly in the sentence “the postman left a letter and a package for Ellen.” May mean “[a letter] and [a package for Ellen]” or it may mean “[a letter and a package] for Ellen.” Examples of deep ambiguity may be found in sentences like “overtaking cars on the main road can be dangerous.” This sentence may mean [overtaking cars is dangerous] or [cars overtaking are dangerous]. Similarly the sentence “ I like Mary better than John” may mean [better than I like John] or [better than John likes Mary]. Some more examples of these ambiguities can be found in the following sentences.

Growing flowers can be very interesting.
We heard her report.
The girl hit the boy with a book.
Visiting relatives can be boring.
The chicken is ready to eat.

Referential ambiguity: misunderstandings appear when a speaker has one referent in mind and the addressee is thinking of a different one. For example the sentence “ Jack told Ralph that a visitor was waiting for him” does not make clear to whom the pronoun ‘him’ is referring. Similarly in the sentence “if you want to get ahead, you have to work hard” does ...

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Growing flowers can be very interesting.
We heard her report.
The girl hit the boy with a book.
Visiting relatives can be boring.
The chicken is ready to eat.

Referential ambiguity: misunderstandings appear when a speaker has one referent in mind and the addressee is thinking of a different one. For example the sentence “ Jack told Ralph that a visitor was waiting for him” does not make clear to whom the pronoun ‘him’ is referring. Similarly in the sentence “if you want to get ahead, you have to work hard” does not clarify whether ‘you’ means a particular person or anyone. Similarly the sentence “Everybody is coming to the party” does not specify which group of people ‘everybody’ means.
Scope ambiguity: This occurs when you cannot determine how much of a sentence applies to another by the linguistic context e.g. “he was speaking to you as a child” may mean that the speaker was being childish or considering the listener to be a child.

There are some other linguistic phenomena that contribute to linguistic ambiguity. These include:

Polysemy (or polysemia) is a compound noun for a basic linguistic feature. The name comes from Greek poly (many) and semy (to do with meaning, as in semantics). Polysemy is also called radiation or multiplication. This happens when a word acquires a wider range of meanings. For example, "paper" comes from Greek papyrus. Originally it referred to writing material made from the papyrus reeds of the Nile, later to other writing materials, and now it refers to things such as government documents, scientific reports, family archives or newspapers.

Denotation: This is the central meaning of a word, as far as it can be described in a dictionary. It is therefore sometimes known as the cognitive or referential meaning. It is possible to think of lexical items that have a more or less fixed denotation ("sun," denoting the nearest star) but this is rare. Most are subject to change over time. The denotation of "silly" today is not what it was in the 16th century. At that time the word meant "happy" or "innocent."

Connotation: Connotation refers to the psychological or cultural aspects; the personal or emotional associations aroused by words. When these associations are widespread and become established by common usage, a new denotation is recorded in dictionaries. A possible example of such a change is the word vicious. Originally derived from vice, it meant "extremely wicked." In modern British usage, however, it is commonly used to mean "fierce," as in the brown rat is a vicious animal.

Implication: This is what the speech intends to mean but does not communicate directly. The listener can deduce or infer the intended meaning from what has been uttered. Example from David Crystal:

Utterance: "A bus!”? Implicature (implicit meaning): "We must run."

Metaphor: This refers to the non-literal meaning of a word, a clause or sentence. Metaphors are very common; in fact all abstract vocabulary is metaphorical. A metaphor compares things. (Examples: "blanket of stars"; "out of the blue")

A metaphor established by usage and convention becomes a symbol. Thus crown suggests the power of the state, press = the print news media and chair = the control (or controller) of a meeting.

Metonym: A word used in place of another word or expression to convey the same meaning. (Example: the use of brass to refer to military officers)

Allegory: The expression by means of symbolic fictional figures and actions of truths or generalizations about human existence; an instance (as in a story or painting) of such expression. "Moby Dick" by Herman Melville is a clear example of allegory; where the great white whale is more than a very large, aquatic mammal; it becomes a symbol for eternity, evil, dread, mortality, and even death, something so great and powerful that we humans cannot even agree on what it might mean.

Homonym: When different words are pronounced, and possibly spelled, the same way (examples: to, too, two; or bat the animal, bat the stick, and bat as in the bat the eyelashes)

Homophone: Where the pronunciation is the same (or close, allowing for such phonological variation as comes from accent) but standard spelling differs, as in flew (from fly), flu ("influenza") and flue (of a chimney).

Homograph: When different words are spelled identically, and possibly pronounced the same (examples: lead the metal and lead, what leaders do)

Paradox: A statement that is seemingly contradictory or opposed to common sense and yet is perhaps true; a self-contradictory statement that at first seems true; an argument that apparently derives self-contradictory conclusions by valid deduction from acceptable premises. Example:

"I do not love you except because I love you;
"I go from loving to not loving you,
"From waiting to not waiting for you
"My heart moves from cold to fire."

Pablo Neruda

Ambiguity and Literature

There is no doubt that ambiguity often occurs unconsciously but very often it is caused intentionally to achieve some other purpose e.g. to create humor or irony or satire etc. Many writers of literature have used ambiguity as the cornerstone of their art by their unique play of words.

Ambiguity is a poetic vehicle. It is human nature to try to find meaning within an exchange. A text is given to us and in return we give our interpretation. Our own associations give understanding of what is presented to us.

A characteristic of the late twentieth century, as well as of postmodern literature, is that certainties are continuously called into question, and thus allegory becomes a suitable form for expression. Allegory is a classic example of double discourse that avoids establishing a center within the text, because in allegory the unity of the work is provided by something that is not explicitly there.

In contrast to symbols, which are generally taken to transcend the sign itself and express universal truths, allegories and metaphors divide the sign, exposing its arbitrariness. Thus the allegorical impulse in contemporary literature can be seen as a reflection of the postmodern emphasis on the reader as co-producer, since it invites the reader's active participation in making meaning.

Metaphors are indeed highly appropriate postmodern devices, because they are obvious vehicles for ambiguity. A living metaphor always carries dual meanings, the literal or sentence meaning and the conveyed or utterance meaning.

A metaphor induces comparison, but since the grounds of similarity are not always given, metaphors serve to emphasize the freedom of the reader as opposed to the authority of the writer.

Historically we can point to Saussure as initiating the discussion related to the arbitrariness of the sign as described in his Course of General Linguistics. The signifier may stay the same but the signified will shift in relation to context. In terms of change over time, Saussure states "whatever the factors involved in [the] change, whether they act in isolation or in combination, they always result in a shift in the relationship between the sign and the signification."

Taking into consideration why all the aforementioned could be considered as a curse, no example of literature better serves than the holy books. These special books, because of their central place at the heart of three of the world's most important religions, have been subject to enormously detailed scrutiny over the centuries in an attempt to glean meaning and to determine "once and for all" the proper way of living and worshipping.

Persecution and oppression have resulted from these interpretations, whether done in the true belief of the of the heretics' evil nature or by cynically using them for political purposes, as Hitler did in his attempted annihilation of the Jews.

Ambiguity and Psychoanalysis

The Freudian concept of symptoms as symbols, his consideration of dreams as hieroglyphic writing, and the cure based on the spoken word, immediately established a link between psychoanalysis and linguistics. Freud presents words as bridges between unconscious and conscious thoughts. Similarly, neurosis presents a peculiar bond between disease and language, representing a usage dysfunction or a symbolization process that failed, or the existence of an archive that contains pathogenic memories.

The study of oral or written slips of the tongue, the forgetting of names, the importance of polysemy and homophony for the Unconscious, the psychic mechanisms like condensation and displacement (metaphor and metonym), is a substantial part of the psychoanalytic discovery-invention-theory.

And the most important aspect is the use and significance of the language in the therapeutic discourse, that is to say, speech as a working tool.

For the discourse analysis, who is talking, how, why and when something is said, are essential. Speech is not a simple vocalization in abstract but a speech about something for someone, about someone, or about something. It is also important how significance and coherence are reached and how the mental processes and representations are involved in the comprehension. All these issues are basic to the psychoanalyst's interpretative work

Therefore, homophones, mistakes provoked by polysemy, metaphors, and metonyms are considered as primary characteristics of the constitutive heterogeneity of the discourses, rather than incorrectness.

Ambiguity and Computational Linguistics

Computational linguistics has two aims: To enable computers to be used as aids in analyzing and processing natural language, and to understand, by analogy with computers, more about how people process natural language.

One of the most significant problems in processing natural language is the problem of ambiguity. Most ambiguities escape our notice because we are very good at resolving them using context and our knowledge of the world. But computer systems do not have this knowledge, and consequently do not do a good job of making use of the context. The problem of ambiguity arises wherever computers try to cope with human language, as when a computer on the Internet retrieves information about alternative meanings of the search terms, meanings that we had no interest in. In machine translation, for a computer it is almost impossible to distinguish between the different meanings of an English word that may be expressed by very different words in the target language. Therefore all attempts to use computers alone to process human language have been frustrated by the computer's limited ability to deal with polysemy.

Efforts to solve the problem of ambiguity have focused on two potential solutions: knowledge-based, and statistical systems. In the knowledge-based approach, the system developers must encode a great deal of knowledge about the world and develop procedures to use it in determining the sense of the text.

In the statistical approach, a large corpus of annotated data is required. The system developers then write procedures that compute the most likely resolutions of the ambiguities, given the words or word classes and other easily determined conditions.

The reality is that there is no operational computer system capable of determining the intended meanings of words in discourse exists today. Nevertheless, solving the polysemy problem is so important that all efforts will continue.

CONCLUSION

Language cannot exist without ambiguity which has represented both a curse and a blessing through the ages.

Since there is no one "truth" and no absolutes, we can only rely on relative truths arising from groups of people who, within their particular cultural systems, attempt to answer their own questions and meet their needs for survival.

Language is a very complex phenomenon. Meanings that can be taken for granted are in fact only the tip of a huge iceberg. Psychological, social and cultural events provide a moving ground on which those meanings take root and expand their branches.