A Systemic Functional Interpretation Of English Ambiguity

Ambiguity is an old and difficult issue. The study of ambiguity dates back to the period of the great philosopher, Plato. As time goes on, numerous experts and scholars in nearly every field, from philosophy to logics, from anthropology to sociology, linguistics, psychology, etc all have devoted their great efforts to studies of this issue. From different point of view and with different theoretical foundations, they carry out their studies and propose different opinions on ambiguity. However, people still can not reach a unanimous agreement on many important problems about this language phenomenon. Ambiguity still remains one of the key open arguments of modern linguists.Halliday's Systemic functional grammar (SFG) came to prevail in the 80s of the last century and still works as an energetic and promising framework in our new era. Influential as it, SFG has not made a systematic exploration on ambiguity. The original wonder of why it has not and whether it can leads to the being of the present thesis. Therefore, with "Can SFG give a systematic interpretation of ambiguity?" as its research question, this thesis begins its tentative exploration into English ambiguity.As SFG is a quite complete theoretical framework, this thesis selectively chooses two most important theories within this framework, namely, the theory of rank scale and the theory of metafunction. This thesis also develops its study in terms of these two dimensions of linguistic system. According to SFG, there are four basic ranks in English: morpheme, word, phrase and clause; language has three metafunctions: ideational, interpersonal, and textual metafunctions. This thesis orderly analyzes ambiguities occurring at the rank of morpheme, word, phrase and clause. Ambiguities at the rank of clause are then particularly studied, from ideational ambiguity to textual ambiguity. In this process, a number of examples are carefully collected, analyzed and they represent nearly all types of ambiguity.As a whole, this study is a qualitative research mainly at the level of theoretical discussion. It shows that SFG can give a systematic and comprehensive interpretation of English ambiguity. As far as the author believes, the significance of this study lies in that it gives a dynamic and deep interpretation of ambiguity and that it makes some supplements to the application of the theory of SFGChomsky has ever emphasized that the ability to solve and explain the ambiguity can decide the degree of accurateness of a grammar. It means that the resolution and explanation of ambiguity is the breakthrough point in grammatical study and therefore the study about ambiguity has great far-reaching. theoretical significance and high practical values. It will certainly promote the development of linguistics.