| People often request the precision in the course of using languages, paying attention to the conciseness and comprehensiveness of language. However, language phenomena are complex. Sometimes what communicators say is not really what they mean, which will cause some misunderstanding in between. As a linguistic phenomenon,- ambiguity is universal, existing in all languages. As early as the 18th century, Wilhelm Von Humboldt pointed out that, the language was the infinite exploitation to the limited means. It was a creative activity (Robin, 1987). It is the essential mechanism for the generation of ambiguity (Qiu Shude, 1998). When a word has more than one meaning, a structure manifests more than one structural relations and an utterance shows different intentions, ambiguity will occur.Recently, people have used all kinds of linguistic theories and patterns to explore ambiguity, but many scholars at home and abroad limit the study on semantic or grammatical level, which is a static research. Language is not isolated and quiescent. It is used creatively in communication. Therefore, pragmatic study on ambiguity begins to be popular, while only a few studies are involved in cognition. After all, ambiguity is not only a communicative phenomenon but also a cognitive one in nature. The thesis tries to explore ambiguity cognitively. The research on language is not only to make clear how to use it, but the most important to understand how people know the world around them, so cognitive interpretation is a discovery of the nature of ambiguity and a further study on ambiguity.In this thesis, the author first summarizes previous researches on ambiguity in terms of definition, classification and interpretation, pointing out the necessity and significance of cognitive study. Next the author illuminates the concept of cognition and approaches of language cognitive processing—modularity and connectionism. Then the thesis analyzes lexical ambiguity, syntactic ambiguity and pragmatic ambiguity separately from cognitive perspectives.The author uses internal lexicon and lexical access to interpret lexical ambiguity, indicating the cognitive mechanism for generation of ambiguity during word inputtingand comprehension. Internal lexicon is like a dictionary internalized in one's mind, containing both linguistic and nonlinguistic features of words. It is built as a semantic network of interconnected elements or information. Once people receive linguistic stimuli, the relevant information stored in internal lexicon will be activated spreadingly, and sometimes some irrelevant information is also activated. Then ambiguity occurs. In addition, the thesis uses four lexical access models—exhaustive access, ordered access, context-dependent access and activation-suppression access to reveal the cognitive procedure of words and analyze the cognitive pattern for the generation of ambiguity.Then syntactic ambiguity is analyzed through memory structure and parsing strategies. Sensory stores and permanent memory only function as an information receiver and a storeroom, providing language processing with immediate materials and stored information. While as a CPU in mind, working memory can not only keep needed information temporarily but also operate language processing. But the limited capacity of working memory decides that if storage function occupies more space, processing function would have relatively less space and vice versa. So the cognitive pattern of sentence comprehending, which aims to lighten burden of thinking, adopts immediacy principle, late closure strategy and minimal attachment strategy, causing ambiguity in sentence understanding.Finally, the author employs cognitive context to analyze pragmatic ambiguity. Cognitive context refers to the information related to language use, which is a conceptualized, schemed information structure. It is an aggregation, including all sorts of assumptions. The author summarizes its features as dynamic, open, interconnected and idiosyncratic, according to which the author suggests three cognitive mechanisms for causing ambiguity. Firstly, information vacancy of cognitive context, that is, the insufficiency or vagueness of cognitive context information of either communicator could arouse ambiguous understandings and block the communication. Secondly, information selected by mistake, which is subdivided into intentional and unintentional selections by mistake, that is, the mapping of intention and meaning between communicators is reciprocal. No matter the projection of intention in source... |
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