A study on ambiguity caused by ellipsis and substitution in english = nghiên cứu về sự mập mờ về nghĩa gây ra do phép tỉnh lược và phép thay thế trong tiếng anh

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS For the completion of this graduation thesis, I have been fortunate to receive invaluable contributions from many people First of all, I especially would like to express my deepest thanks to my supervisor, Mrs Vo Thi Hong Minh, MA, whose useful instructions and advice, as well as detailed critical comments help me a great deal from the beginning to the end of the thesis writing process Without her help, the study would have never finished I also should like to thank the teachers in Foreign Language Department at Vinh University who have given me useful advice and favourable conditions for the completion of the study Additionally, I am grateful to all students in class K48B2 English at Vinh University who have help me to carry out the survey for my thesis Last but not least, I am in debt to my beloved family and my dedicated friends who are always by my side with their constant help and spiritual support during my studying process I have made great efforts to complete the study However, due to my limited knowledge, the study is far from being perfect Thus, the author would like to receive any comments from the teachers, friends, and those who are concerned about this area, which can help improve the study Vinh, May, 2011 Vo Thi Kim Oanh i ABSTRACT The importance of understanding English expressions and sentences, as well as the whole text in order to translate them into Vietnamese correctly has stimulated the author in the study on ambiguity caused by ellipsis and substitution In this thesis, the author discusses different definitions of ambiguity, ellipsis and substitution and their types first Then, the survey is implemented so as to investigate the main types of ambiguity caused by ellipsis and substitution From the result, some suggestions for making disambiguation are given In addition, some types of exercises are also given to practice ii TABLE OF CONTENTS ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS i ABSTRACT ii TABLE OF CONTENTS iii PART I: INTRODUCTION i Justification of the Study Aims of the Study Research Questions Scope of the Study Methods of the Study Format of the Study PART II: DEVELOPMENT CHAPTER 1: THEORETICAL BACKGROUND 1.1 The Nature of Ambiguity 1.2 Types of Ambiguity 1.2.1 Lexical Ambiguity 1.2.2 Grammatical Ambiguity (Structural Ambiguity) 1.4 Definition of Ellipsis 10 1.5 Types of Ellipsis 11 1.5.1 Nominal ellipsis: 11 1.5.2 Verbal Ellipsis: 12 1.5.3 Clausal Ellipsis: 14 1.6 Definition of Substitution 15 1.7 Types of Substitution 16 1.7.1 Nominal Substitution 16 1.7.2 Verbal Substitution 17 1.7.3 Clausal Substitution 18 CHAPTER 2: THE SURVEY 20 2.1 Overview of the Survey 20 iii 2.1.1 Aims of the Survey 20 2.1.2 Survey Setting 20 2.2 Description of Survey Exercises 20 2.3 Survey Result and Data Analysis 20 CHAPTER 3: FINDINGS AND DISCUSSION 29 3.1 Major Findings 29 3.2 Some Ways of Disambiguation 30 3.2.1 Some Recommendation for Using Ellipsis and Substitution to Disambiguate 30 3.2.2 Some Suggestions for Readers to Avoid Ambiguity caused by Ellipsis and Substitution 33 3.3 Some Exercises to Practice 35 PART III: CONCLUSION 38 Recapitulation 38 Suggestions for Further Studies 39 APPENDIX REFERENCES iv PART I: INTRODUCTION Justification of the Study Nowadays English has become popular in all aspects such as: education, economy, politics, science, ect In Vietnam it is one of the most important and compulsory subjects at all levels of learning and teaching In recent years, together with the increasing need for learners, great efforts have been made in order to improve the quality of English teaching and learning Vocabulary and grammar which seem to be the most important things in language system have attracted the attention of a large number of researchers The author herself is really fond of studying the use of words as well as grammar structures Moreover, since the Vietnamese and English languages have very district grammar systems, Vietnamese learners of English tend to encounter a lot of difficulties in their acquisition of the target language One of these difficulties is ambiguity caused by the usage of words and sentence structures This makes learners at all levels, from elementary to university or even at higher levels, difficult to understand and to interpret English into Vietnamese and vice verse In many years of learning English, the author has also met a lot of ambiguity Many researchers have been made in order to find out and avoid ambiguity when using English However, many questions have been raised for this topic Additionally, in English grammar system, cohesive devices play an important role in understanding and interpreting English into Vietnamese Among them, ellipsis and substitution seem to appear a lot in the text In some cases, these two cohesive devices also cause some ambiguity This does not only make students but also the teachers who teach English get difficulty when interpret English sentences Therefore, it is really important and necessary to avoid this ambiguity However, to my best knowledge, very little research has been done on analyzing ambiguity caused by ellipsis and substitution That is why the author wants to pay her attention and contribution to solve this problem Ellipsis and substitution are used a lot in all books and at any levels of English learning However, at low levels the students rarely realize ambiguity caused by ellipsis and substitution since they mainly get knowledge from teacher but not study themselves Only from high levels students begin to study about this Further more, at university level, students have to study many subjects related to ellipsis and substitution as well as ambiguity such as: Discourse Analysis, An Introduction to Linguistics, English Lexicology, ect Therefore, solving the problem of ambiguity caused by ellipsis and substitution will also help students at this level study these subjects better This is also the reason for the author to conduct the survey at university level Beside that, the author has been trained to be a teacher of English in the near future, so the knowledge of using English words and structures is really important and necessary To know in what ways ellipsis and substitution cause ambiguity and how to avoid them are indispensable in teaching English All of the above reasons and factors have inspired the author to choose the thesis entitled: “A study on ambiguity caused by ellipsis and substitution in English” with the hope that this study will provide English learners a better understanding about ellipsis and substitution and their ambiguity In addition, the study is implemented with the hope to make a little contribution to solve ambiguity caused by ellipsis and substitution Aims of the Study For the reasons mentioned above, the thesis has been done with the aims to:  Provide some general knowledge about: nature of ambiguity, types of ambiguity, factors cause ambiguity, definition of ellipsis, types of ellipsis, definition of substitution and types of substitution  Investigate the circumstances in which ellipsis and substitution usually cause ambiguity  Indicate the main ambiguities caused by ellipsis and substitution  Give some recommendations and suggestions for avoiding ambiguity caused by ellipsis and substitution  Give some ellipsis and substitution exercises to practice Research Questions The study aims to answer the following questions:  In what circumstances ellipsis and substitution usually cause ambiguity?  What are the main types of ambiguity caused by ellipsis and substitution?  How to avoid ambiguity caused by ellipsis and substitution? Scope of the Study This paper deals with a small part of English ambiguity that is ambiguity caused by ellipsis and substitution and how to avoid it However, it is too broad and difficult to carry out the survey at all levels of students Thus, the thesis only focuses on the fourth-year students in Vinh University All provided knowledge and survey exercises are based on the text books at university level and the research works of many English Linguists Methods of the Study To carry out the study, the following methods and procedures were employed:  Investigating methods  Analytic and synthetic methods  Descriptive methods  Comparative and contrastive methods Format of the Study The thesis consists of three parts:  Part I: Introduction This part deals with justification, aims, research questions, scope and methods of the study The format of the study is also provided  Part II: Development This part consists of three chapters:  Chapter 1: Theoretical background This chapter consists of seven main sections: nature of ambiguity, types of ambiguity, definition of ellipsis, types of ellipsis, definition of substitution and types of substitution  Chapter 2: The survey This chapter consists of two sections The first section describes such elements related to the methodology of the survey as survey setting and data collection The second section presents the results of the survey, the analysis of ambiguity caused by ellipsis and substitution through exercises  Chapter 3: Findings and discussion This chapter presents some major findings about ambiguity which is caused by ellipsis and substitution derived from the analysis Then some ways of disambiguation are provided Some exercises for practicing are also given in this chapter  Part III: Conclusion This part will summarize what have been presented in the thesis and give some suggestions for further studies The References and Appendix are provided at the end of the thesis PART II: DEVELOPMENT CHAPTER 1: THEORETICAL BACKGROUND 1.1 The Nature of Ambiguity To say something about the nature of ambiguity, we have, first of all, to try our best to give an explicit definition of ambiguity, which will help to constrain our scope of inquiry “Ambiguity - a word, phrase, or sentence is ambiguous if it has more than one meaning” (Bach, 1994) For instance, the word “bank” carries several distinct lexical definitions, including “organizations dealing with money” and “the edge of a river” Another definition: “ambiguity is a one-many relation between syntax and sense.” (Geoffrey Leech, Semantics, Harmondsworth: Penguin Books, 1987, quoted by Pehar) In „A Discussion on Ambiguity in English‟ Qing-liang, Z defines ambiguity as follows: Ambiguity is defined as the fact that a word (or an expression) or a sentence, before realization of stress, stop, intonation or other phonological means and without any more presuppositions or contexts than what the word or the sentence itself creates, can be regarded as two or more different descriptive senses To make our definition clearly understood, it seems necessary to explain it in further detail Some linguists think that almost every expression or sentence, before realized by phonological means, is ambiguous For example, by putting stress on different parts of the following ambiguous expression “English teacher”, ambiguity is completely got rid of: English teacher = a teacher who teaches English, whether he is an Englishman is unknown; English teacher = a teacher from Britain, whether he teaches English is unknown Another example may be the shifting of logical stress to create different presuppositions Such a sentence as “He came here yesterday” may presuppose quite differently by shifting the local stress: He came here yesterday Presuppose: not I, you, etc He came here yesterday Presuppose: not ran, etc He came here yesterday Presuppose: not other places He came here yesterday Presuppose: not other days It often happens that when we are talking, we don‟t realize there is any ambiguity there but when we have it written down and isolate every sentence from the context, we will find that many of the sentences are ambiguous; and the more parts we divide the whole into, the more ambiguous we have So secondly, we have to point out that ambiguity exists when there are no more contexts than the expression or sentence itself For example “She can‟t bear children” may be understood to mean “She is unable to give birth to children” or “She cannot tolerate children” The sentence is ambiguous only because it has no more contexts than the sentence itself By putting enough contexts to make the ambiguous word contained in a certain semantic field; the ambiguity is eliminated, as is illustrated by the following sentences: A: She cannot bear children if they are noisy B: She cannot bear children because she is sterile Thirdly, it is necessary to notice that our definition is confined to the descriptive meaning, or the conception meaning of an expression or a sentence Such sentences as “It‟s very cold today”, which may on certain occasion mean “Oh, please close the window” are not within our concern In short, Ambiguity means something that can mean two different things Such things are ambiguous Sometimes the word is used to mean something that can mean several things or that is unclear In the proper sense it should mean “two different meanings” because “ambi” comes from the Greek word for “two” 1.2 Types of Ambiguity Actually, as Cruse (1986) mentioned, ambiguities can be classified into several categories They are: - Lexical ambiguity (Polysymy Relationship): The lexical ambiguity of a word or phrase contains in its having more than one meaning in the language to which the word belongs Example: An untitled photograph showing meanings of brass - Contextual ambiguity (Syntactic ambiguity): Contextual ambiguity means sentences that have no ambiguous words (no polysyms) and can be reasonably figured out with little confusion given to the reader “The Chicken is ready to Eat” - Semantic ambiguity: This type of ambiguity occurs when there are two or more ways to read the structure of a sentence Instead of lexical ambiguity (a finite number of known and meaningful contextdependent interpretations), semantic ambiguity gives a choice between any number of possible interpretations, none of them have a standard agreed meaning For example: “Flying aircraft may be hazardous.” (Chomsky, 1957) - Homonyms & homophones (in spoken English only) For words like “bear” and “bare” (homophones) their sounds the same and may cause ambiguities during daily conversations For example: The little bare bear According to Bach, “there are two types of ambiguity, lexical and structural Lexical ambiguity is by far the more common” (Routledge Encyclopedia of Philosophy entry on Ambiguity) CHAPTER 3: FINDINGS AND DISCUSSION In the previous chapter, the situations that usually cause ambiguity have been shown and it has been evidenced that many students had difficulty in understanding the meanings and function of some words in the sentence when using ellipsis and substitution In this chapter, major findings will be presented and some ways of disambiguation will be provided as well 3.1 Major Findings After a thorough investigation, it has been found that many students met with difficulties in understanding the meaning of the sentences that contain ellipsis or substitution The result of the survey exercises indicates that ambiguity caused by ellipsis and substitution belongs to two main types: lexical and grammatical ambiguity Lexical ambiguity, as is shown in the first and the second section of the survey exercises, were commonly caused by nominal and verbal ellipsis Besides, nominal, verbal and clausal ellipses are also the causes of lexical ambiguity From the survey, especially in the third section, we can find the second types of ambiguity that is called grammatical ambiguity It is apparent from the result that many students misunderstood the function of the words that were underlined As the result of the study showed, nearly all types of the nominal ellipsis are the causes of lexical ambiguity such as: specific deictics with „both‟, non-specific deictics with „neither‟, post-deictics with „other‟, and epithets with „the finest‟ Both lexical and grammatical ambiguity caused by verbal ellipsis can be seen a lot in all the sections of the survey exercises Further more, we can also see lexical ambiguity by nominal substitution with „he‟, „it‟, „one‟ … Apart from it, verbal substitution with lexical and operator are also the sources of both lexical and grammatical ambiguity The result of the study reveals that: reducing the clauses and replacing them by „with‟ and „so‟ also make the readers difficult to understand the sentences correctly What is more, from the students‟ answers in section II, we can see the difference in paraphrasing the sentences which are elliptical and substituted This proves the fact that ellipsis and substitution cause a lot of ambiguity In the third section, the result shows that nominal ellipsis, verbal substitution and clausal substitution are the main causes of grammatical ambiguity Therefore, we can come to the conclusion that almost all types of ellipsis and substitution are the sources of both lexical and grammatical ambiguity They make the readers meet with many difficulties to understand the functions of the words and the meanings of the sentences as well Among these factors, nominal ellipsis and verbal substitution seem to be the most causes Through the exercises, we can also find out that lexical ambiguity and grammatical ambiguity are the main types of ambiguity caused by ellipsis and substitution Of 29 the two ones, lexical ambiguity is more popular than grammatical ambiguity In addition, nominal ellipsis and nominal substitution are the common causes of lexical ambiguity; whereas, verbal ellipsis, verbal substitution and clausal substitution are the common causes of grammatical ambiguity The last thing we can find out from the survey that is the main sources of lexical ambiguity caused by ellipsis and substitution are homonymy, polysemy, obscure reference; and those of grammatical ambiguity are parts of speech and word function To sum up, from the survey we can find out the main types as well as the main sources of ambiguity caused by ellipsis and substitution 3.2 Some Ways of Disambiguation From the Findings of the survey, in this part the author would like to discuss about how to avoid ambiguity caused by ellipsis and substitution and provided some exercises to practice 3.2.1 Some Recommendation for Using Ellipsis and Substitution to Disambiguate After studying about ellipsis and substitution and analyzing the survey data the author would like to give some recommends for using ellipsis and substitution It is not easy to avoid ambiguity absolutely; however, the following suggestions can help the readers to limit it:  Avoiding Ambiguous Expressions Using ellipsis and substitution is necessary to avoid repetition but it usually cause ambiguity Therefore, when using them the writers should avoid using the words that easily cause ambiguity for the readers Consider the following instance as an illustration: Tom called his father last night They talked for an hour He said he would be home the next day With the sentences which have more than one subject and ambiguity among the subjects, we can use a proper name instead of using substitution For instance, in the above example we can replace “he” by “Tom” or “his father” Let have a look at another example: I gave her cat food This sentence will probably make the readers misunderstand the function of word “her”, which can be objective or possession adjective So, to disambiguate this sentence, we can use another way of expressing, such as: “I gave cat food to her” or “I gave food to her cat” Here is another instance: Mai said to Nga that Minh would see her that Sunday 30 In this example the word “her” may refer to “Mai” or “Nga” The sentence will be easier to understand if we rewrite it as follows: „Minh will see you this Sunday‟, Mai said to Nga Or: „Minh will see me this Sunday‟, Mai said to Nga In short, we can use many ways to avoid ambiguous expressions  Limiting Ellipsis and Substitution for Ambiguous Sentences If the sentences can make the readers difficult to understand, the writers should not use ellipsis and should use substitution instead For examples: Joan takes the children to the park today and Barbara (does) tomorrow Jame enjoys the film more than Susan (does) In these sentences, if we omit auxiliary verb “does”, the readers will easily misunderstand the functions of the underlined words They will hesitate between “objective” or “subjective” Therefore, if we substitute the main verbs by auxiliary verb “does”, it is easier to understand the functions of the underlined words as well as the meaning of the whole sentence Consider another example: The lady hit the man with an umbrella With this sentence we can rewrite as follow: “The lady hit the man who was carrying an umbrella” Or: “The lady used an umbrella to hit the man” Thus, if ellipsis and substitution make the reader misunderstand the meaning of the sentence, we can limit them to avoid ambiguity  Replacing Types of Words To avoid ambiguity caused by ellipsis and substitution, we can use another types of words to replace ambiguous words Here is an instance to illustrate: He loves the dog more than his wife … If his wife were replaced by a pronoun, formal or fastidious English could disambiguate this example: He loves the dog more than she (1) He loves the dog more than her (2) (A University grammar of English: 264) Let‟s have a look at another example: 31 Tony saw her duck Here, we can replace “her duck” by “Cathy‟s duck” so that the readers can understand more easily Replacing types of words is necessary to help the readers realize the meaning and function of the words exactly  Contextualizing One way of word disambiguating is to provide additional contexts or any pieces of information to the ambiguous word of sentence The context includes information contained within the text or discourse in which the word appears, together with extra-linguistic information about the text If a sentence is written without context, it is very difficult to understand it comprehensively Thus, when we write a sentence, it is important for us to give a specific context so that the readers can easily understand the sentence For example: That clown is the finest I‟ve seen In this sentence, the finest will be ambiguous between the “comedian” and “the cloud in the sky” if we not give the context: “They are fine actors” Here is another example: Tom called his father last night They talked for an hour He said he would be home the next day “He” in this sentence will be clearer if we give enough information as follow: Tom called his father from hospital last night They talked for an hour He said he would be home the next day In short, in a specific context, ambiguity can easily disappear; or at least, the possibilities of ambiguity may be discount 32  Providing Grammatical Environment As Lam, MA states in “Lexical Ambiguity in the English Language”: It is also interesting to note that the grammatical environment can help to eliminate lexical ambiguity, especially the ambiguity resulting from partial homonymy (Lyons, 1995: 57) Consider the following example: They are fine actors That clown is the finest I‟ve seen We can see that if we not base on the first sentence, we can be ambiguous about the meaning of “the finest cloud” Have a short look at another instance: Joan takes the children to the park today and Barbara tomorrow Contrast the above sentence with the following: Joan takes the children to the park today and Barbara will tomorrow If we provide an auxiliary verb “will” after Barbara, the sentence can not be ambiguous any more The reader will easily understand that Barbara is the subject of the second clause In summary, avoiding ambiguous expressions and limiting ellipsis and substitution together with replacing types of words can help to disambiguate the lexically ambiguous sentence Furthermore, lexical ambiguity in English can be eliminated by means of additional contexts or any pieces of information Grammatical environment can also help the readers avoid grammatical ambiguity 3.2.2 Some Suggestions for Readers to Avoid Ambiguity caused by Ellipsis and Substitution When running across an ambiguous sentence, it is easier for the readers to understand the sentence if the following suggestions are implemented:  Considering the Context As is known to us, the appearance of ambiguity is tightly associated with the absence of communicational situation or specific context Consequently, contextualization ranks the top and important position when we disambiguation That is why we had better consider the context to understand the words as well as the sentence comprehensively Look at the following instance as an illustration: Tom called his father from hospital last night They talked for an hour He said he would be home the next day In this example, it can be easily understood from the context “Tom called his father from hospital” that the personal pronoun “he” refers to Tom 33 Here is another example: They are fine actors That clown is the finest I‟ve seen Through a consideration of the context of the first sentence, the readers can easily recognize that “the finest” in the second sentence means “the finest actor” Context can be used to resolve the lexical ambiguity caused by homonymy With regard to obscure reference, context also works well in disambiguating Extra-linguistic context is of great importance in helping to avoid lexical ambiguity The grammatical disambiguating role of context may, too, be illustrated by the following sentences: Joan shares children care with Barbara Joan takes the children to the park today and Barbara tomorrow With considering the first sentence, we can see the function of the word Barbara in the second one; that is the subject of the second clause To put in a nutshell, context makes great contributions to disambiguating lexical items as well as grammar  Considering the Grammatical Environment There is no denying the fact that grammatical environment plays much important role in interpreting sentences as well as the whole texts It helps us to see exact meaning of words from the words around The ability to resolve lexical ambiguity of grammar can also be shown in the following example: What have you been doing? – Being chased by a bull (Halliday and Hasan, 1976:175) The second sentence is nominal ellipsis, but from the verb phrase “being chased”, we can easily understand the whole sentence that “I have been being chased by a bull” Let‟s consider another instance: Did you collect the subscriptions? – Smith did (Halliday and Hasan, 1976: 213) From auxiliary verb “did” in past tense, the sentences can be discovered “Smith collected the subscription” Disambiguation of grammatical environment is also shown in the following example: Which last longer, the curved rods or the straight rods? – The straight are less likely to break (Halliday and Hasan, 1976: 148) 34 Even though the noun “rods” is elliptic, “The straight” here helps us to understand the whole sentence that is “The straight rods are less likely to break” Therefore, to figure out the exact meanings of ambiguous words or sentences demand our careful consideration in grammatical environment In summary, considering the context and grammatical environment is indispensable to avoid ambiguity caused by ellipsis and substitution Many ways of disambiguation have been given out by many researchers; yet the above suggestions may more or less make a contribution to limiting ambiguity 3.3 Some Exercises to Practice All of the above methods would be useless if we not put them into practice Thus, to avoid ambiguity caused by ellipsis and substitution, we need to practice them a lot Practice exercises should be designed with various types in order to master the meaning, form as well as the use of elliptic and substituted items For this purpose, the following exercises are designed for the readers to practice They consist of four types With the first type, students use ellipsis and substitution to rewrite sentences In the second type, students vice versa The third type is designed for practicing disambiguation The last one helps students to practice changing elliptic and substituted items from Vietnamese into English equivalents I Rewrite the following sentences omitting whatever can be elliptic or substituted without change of meaning: Some people like salty food, others dislikes salty food Your experience and my experience are equally useful Will you take the exam now or will you take the exam in December? Yesterday John was given a robot and Sue was given a doll Bill love Bill‟s mother and John loves Bill‟s mother too Mary likes me more than Susan like me 35 II Expand the following elliptic and substituted sentences in order to make their meaning clearer: Bob met Alice at the party and Vicki in the lobby Modern readers know Mary Shelley better than Mary Wollstonecraft Does Jimmy sing? – No, but Mary does Bean passed the exam and so does Jack She felt sad but I don‟t know why Have you any envelopes? – I need another one III Underline one ambiguous expression in each of the following sentences and disambiguate them: John likes me more than Sue They fed her dog biscuits She loves her husband and so does her best friend The lady hit the man with an umbrella I look after Daisy this week and Polo next week He knows more beautiful women than Julia Roberts John told Jim that Sue would come to see him 36 IV Translate the following sentences into English using ellipsis and substitution and avoiding ambiguity: Tôi đưa thức ăn cho mèo cô Anh biết nhiều người tiếng cô biết Linda chăm sóc mẹ tuần cịn anh trai chăm sóc mẹ tuần tới Mai bảo với Nga Minh đến gặp Mai vào chủ nhật Quý bà đụng phải anh chàng mang ô 37 PART III: CONCLUSION Recapitulation In a word, ambiguity is a kind of very interesting linguistic phenomenon, which deserves our careful observation and research Unintentional ambiguity causing inconvenience needs to be exposed and eliminated There are many factors causing ambiguity and ellipsis and substitution are the two of them How to disambiguate the ellipted and substituted sentences seems to be a big problem for us However, very few writings have been done for ambiguity caused by ellipsis and substitution Thus, this study aims at solving this problem through studying ambiguity caused by ellipsis and substitution and besides giving some suggestions to avoid it Based on the theory and previous researches, the thesis has reviewed English ellipsis and substitution and their subtypes at the level of noun, verb and clause have also been described in order to give the readers a general view of them Furthermore, the definition of ambiguity and its types have also been presented in many different points of view Additionally, the survey exercises have been designed in the view of investigating the ambiguity caused by ellipsis and substitution The survey has been conducted with 32 fourth year students at Vinh University From the result of the survey, we can see that many students have misunderstood the meanings and the functions of the underlined words Further more, they have also met difficulties in realizing reference among items The survey has shown the fact that using ellipsis and substitution can cause ambiguity for the readers in some cases Through data analysis, lexical ambiguity and grammatical ambiguity are known as the main types of ambiguity caused by ellipsis and substitution Of the two types, lexical ambiguity is more popular than grammatical ambiguity In addition, nominal ellipsis and nominal substitution are the common causes of lexical ambiguity; whereas, verbal ellipsis, verbal substitution and clausal substitution are the common causes of grammatical ambiguity Together with investigating the ambiguity caused by ellipsis and substitution, some suggestions have also been raised in order to prevent ambiguity as well as make disambiguation Many methods of using ellipsis and substitution have been given out; and some ways of disambiguation when running across ambiguous sentences have been raised as well These suggestions will likely make more or less contribution to avoiding ambiguity in the elliptic and substituted sentences Finally, some exercises have been also designed to help students practice using ellipsis and substitution as well as using methods of disambiguating Several types of exercises with 38 different contexts related to ellipsis, substitution and their ambiguity have been suggested for practicing with the hope that the students can avoid ambiguity when they face it To sum up, through the study the readers can see the ambiguity caused by ellipsis and substitution as well as the ways to disambiguate them To make disambiguation, it demands not only the careful consideration of the readers but also the caution of the writers Suggestions for Further Studies Due to the limitation of time and scope of the study, the thesis can not cover all aspects related to the matter In this study, the author just deals with the ambiguity caused by ellipsis and substitution with the fourth year students of Foreign language Department at Vinh University Therefore, she would like to give some suggestions for further studies as follows: A study on English ambiguity caused by homonymy and polysemy A study on ambiguity in English brief news A study on grammatical ambiguity in English Lexical ambiguity in English and Vietnamese: A contrastive analysis Structural ambiguity in English and Vietnamese: A contrastive analysis 39 APPENDIX ELLIPSIS AND SUBSTITUTION EXERCISES Name: Class: I Circle the answer you think it is right: The father and the mother were so busy making money that the two children were left to their own devices Naturally both were resentful “Both” refers to: a The father and the mother b The two children c The father, mother and the two children His sons went into business with their friends Neither succeeded „Neither‟ refers to: a his sons b his sons and their friends I‟ve used up these three yellow files you gave me Can I use the other? „The other‟ refers to: a the other three files b the other file They are fine actors That clown is the finest I‟ve seen „The finest‟ refers to: a the finest actor b the finest clown (thing flying the sky) That clown is the finest I‟ve ever seen „The finest‟ refers to: a the finest comedian b the finest clown (thing flying the sky) He loves the dog more than his wife This sentence means: a He loves the dog more than his wife loves the dog b He loves the dog more than he loves his wife The police shot the thief with the gun This sentence means: a The police used the gun to shot the thief b The police shot the thief who was carrying the gun Tom called his father last night They talked for an hour He said he would be home the next day “He” refers to: a Tom b his father 40 I‟m glad I‟m a man and so is Lola This sentence means: a Lola and I are both glad I'm a man b I'm glad I'm a man and Lola is glad he's a man c I'm glad Lola and I are both men 10 Everyone seems to think he‟s guilty If so, no doubt he‟ll offer to resign „So‟ substitutes for: a he‟s guilty b everyone seems to think he‟s guilty II Paraphrase the following sentences in as many ways as possible: John loves his mother and so does Bill I saw her duck He hit the boy with a stick Joan takes the children to the park today and Barbara tomorrow She loves her husband more than his son III Indicate the function of the words underlined: Nancy buys food for children this week and her husband next week a objective b subjective of the second clause Jame enjoys the film more than Susan a objective b subjective of the second clause Jame enjoys the film more than Susan does a objective b subjective of the second clause I saw her work a adjective b objective He saw the girl with black glasses a modifier of verb b modifier of objective 41 REFERENCES Bach, K (1994) Conversational Implicature Mind & Language 9: Bach, Routledge Encyclopedia of Philosophy entry on Ambiguity Retreived March 19, 2011, from http://www.online.sfsu.edu/~kbach/ambguity.htm Cobuild, C (1989) English Grammar Collin Birmingham University: International Language Database Cook, G (1989) Discourse London: Oxford University Press Cruse, D A (1986) Lexical Semantics Cambridge, England: Cambridge University Press, pp 49-68 Crystal, D (1992) Introducing Linguistics Hadow: Penguin Downing, Angela & Locke, Phillip (1995) A University Course in English Grammar London: Phoenix ELT Geoffrey Leech Semantics, Harmondsworth: Penguin Books, 1987 Halliday, M.A.K and Hasan, R (1976) Cohesion in English Longman Group Limited 10 Hurford, J.R and Heasley, B (1983) Semantics: A Coursebook London and New York: Cambridge University Press 11 Lam, Nguyen Thi Van (2007) Lexical Ambiguity in the English Language Vinh University Retreived April 21, 2011, from http://www.tuninst.net/English/Lam-Lexical-ambiguity.htm 12 Lyons, J (1995) Linguistics Semantics: An Introduction Cambridge: Cambridge University Press 13 Mc Carthy, M, (1991) Introducing Discourse Analysis for Language Teacher Cambridge University Press 14 Minh Thu A University Grammar of English R.A.Close Vietnam: Hai Phong Press 15 Morley, G.D (1985) An Introduction to Systemic Grammar Mac Milan Publisher Lmt Press 16 Nguyen Hoa (2001) An Introduction to Discourse Analysis Vietnam National University Publishing House 17 Quing-liang, Z (2007) A Discussion on Ambiguity in English China: Linyi Normal University 18 Quirk, R et al (1972) A Grammar of Contemporary English London: Longman Group Ltd, Essex 19 Salkie, R (1993) Text and Discourse Analysis London: Rout ledge 42  Websites: http://www.linguist.org.cn/doc/uc200701/uc20070101.pdf http://www.diplomacy.edu/language/Ambiguity/default.htm http://www.papyr.com/hypertextbook http://www.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ambiguity http://www.online.sfsu.edu/~kbach/ambguity.htm http://www.tuninst.net/English/Lam-Lexical-ambiguity.htm 43 ... news A study on grammatical ambiguity in English Lexical ambiguity in English and Vietnamese: A contrastive analysis Structural ambiguity in English and Vietnamese: A contrastive analysis 39 APPENDIX... grammatical ambiguity In addition, nominal ellipsis and nominal substitution are the common causes of lexical ambiguity; whereas, verbal ellipsis, verbal substitution and clausal substitution. .. has shown the fact that using ellipsis and substitution can cause ambiguity for the readers in some cases Through data analysis, lexical ambiguity and grammatical ambiguity are known as the main