Essay On Ambiguity In Language

As the first technique that people need to use when conveying a concept, language is an unseparated part of people’s life. Language can be a system of signs, including symbols, body gestures, oral words, phrases, and sentences. It can also be computer programs and mathematical formulas. The forms of language are not limited. No matter what form that language appears to be, people regard it as a way of knowing. People use language more as a carrier or a method to learn and convey knowledge. Generally, there always exists ambiguity in language that causes misunderstanding. This misunderstanding leads to either inconvenience in communication or as serious as political inquisition that may affect one’s whole career. Ambiguity in language has a negative effect on lives of both speakers and listeners.

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It completes the task of identifying and characterizing systematic phenomenon in language. According to the study of semantics, some common and highly flexible words like the verbs 'do ', 'put ' and ‘make’ or the prepositions 'at ', 'in ' and 'to ' are considered to have rich and subtle semantic behavior. As a result, various verb phrases are created that can be used to express different meanings within a list word choice. The more limited words that speakers can use, the more possible that ambiguity will be caused. In the case of polysemous, a single word can represent multiple meanings. For instance, having two unrelated antonyms, such as the simple adjective 'hard ' that has both 'soft ' and 'easy ' as opposites. Listeners have to choose from the two possible meanings by relating to the sentence. Such examples are commonly discovered in many nouns and adjectives. Through these examples, it is deduced that it is not always clear when only one word is used. A single word can have more than one meanings, causing listeners to wonder which meaning is the speaker referring