Types of ambuity in writing english by sophomore students of english education at can tho university

CAN THO UNIVERSITY
SCHOOL OF EDUCATION
ENGLISH EDUCATION DEPARTMENT

TYPES OF AMBIGUITY IN WRITING ENGLISH BY
SOPHOMORE STUDENTS OF ENGLISH EDUCATION
AT CAN THO UNIVERSITY
B.A. Thesis

Supervisor:

Researcher:

Truong Nguyen Quynh Nhu, MA

Tran Thi Ngoc Hue
Student ID: 7062943
Class: NN0652A2
Course: 32

Can Tho, May 2010


ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
I would like to express my sincere gratitude for all those who have contributed to the
completion of this thesis in different ways.
First of all, I would like to show my deepest gratitude to my supervisor, Truong
Nguyen Quynh Nhu MA, who gave me useful advice, clear instructions and valuable
feedback on the thesis. Her encouragement and enthusiasm were the most crucial
factors to the completion of my thesis. I will never forget her care about my anxiety
and difficulties when I was in the teaching practicum at high school.

Second, I would like to send my appreciation to Dr. Nguyen Thu Huong and Huynh
Trung Tin MA. They were very supportive teachers who gave me valuable feedback on
the thesis, and were willing to recommend me references.
Third, I would like to gratefully acknowledge Nguyen Thi Trang Thao MA for her
generous advice and support on the analysis of the data.
Fourth, my deep gratitude also goes to my academic counselor, Do Xuan Hai MA, who
encouraged me to do this bachelor thesis.
Last but not least, my regards are due to the participants, the students of English
Education course 34 at CTU and all of my classmates. Without their contribution and
mental support, the study could not have been conducted.

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TÓM LƯỢC
Nghiên cứu này được thực hiện từ tháng 2/2010 đến cuối tháng 4/2010 tại trường Đại
học Cần Thơ dựa trên lý thuyết về sự tối nghĩa, các loại tối nghĩa và cách kiểm tra sự
tối nghĩa. Nghiên cứu nhằm mục đích (1) tìm ra những loại tối nghĩa mà sinh viên
năm thứ 2 ngành Sư phạm Anh văn tại trường Đại học Cần Thơ mắc phải trong quá
trình viết tiếng Anh và (2) đề xuất những phương hướng nhằm hạn chế các lọai tối
nghĩa phổ biến. Có 29 sinh viên năm thứ hai ngành Sư phạm Anh văn tại trường tham
gia nghiên cứu. Kết quả nghiên cứu được thu thập từ một đề bài viết. Kết quả cho thấy
100% đối tượng nghiên cứu mắc phải các lỗi tối nghĩa trong khi viết. Đồng thời, kết
quả cũng cho thấy các lỗi tối nghĩa về mặt cấu trúc (structural ambiguities) và phạm vi
(scope ambiguities) được sử dụng ở mức độ thường xuyên hơn so với các lỗi tham
khảo (referential ambiguities) và từ vựng (lexical ambiguities). Dựa trên kết quả
nghiên cứu, tác giả đề xuất các biện pháp nhằm giúp sinh viên hạn chế các loại tối
nghĩa phổ biến. Bên cạnh đó, các đề nghị về phương pháp giảng dạy cũng được đưa
ra.

ABSTRACT
This study was conducted from February 2010 to the end of April 2010 at Can Tho
University basing on theories of ambiguity, ambiguity types, and ambiguity test. The
purposes of this study are (1) to investigate what types of ambiguity in writing English
sophomore students of English Education at CTU make and (2) to provide
recommendations of resolving common types of ambiguities. There were 29
sophomore English Education majors participating in the study. Data were collected
from a standardized writing test. The result of the data showed that 100% of the
participants made ambiguous sentences in writing. Also, the result showed that more
structural and scope ambiguities were made than referential and lexical were. On the
basis of the findings, recommendations of resolving common types of ambiguities are
included (i.e., structural, scope, referential and lexical ambiguities), and pedagogical
implications are also provided.

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TABLE OF CONTENTS
Acknowledgements ...................................................................................................... i
Abstract ....................................................................................................................... ii
Table of contents ........................................................................................................ iii
List of tables and figures ............................................................................................. v
Chapter 1: Introduction............................................................................................ 1
1.1. Rationale ............................................................................................................... 1
1.2. Research aims ....................................................................................................... 3
1.3. Significance of the study ...................................................................................... 3
1.4. Organization of the study ..................................................................................... 3
Chapter 2: Literature Review .................................................................................. 5
2.1. Definitions of ambiguity ...................................................................................... 5
2.2. Types of ambiguity............................................................................................... 6

2.3. An ambiguity test ............................................................................................... 11
Chapter 3: Research Methodology ........................................................................ 14
3.1 Research question ................................................................................................ 14
3.2. Hypotheses ......................................................................................................... 14
3.3. Research design .................................................................................................. 14
3.4. Participants ......................................................................................................... 14
3.5. Research instrument ........................................................................................... 15
3.6. Procedures of test administration ....................................................................... 15
Chapter 4: Results ................................................................................................... 17
4.1. Ambiguity types and frequencies of occurrence ................................................ 17
4.2. Structural ambiguity types and frequencies of occurrence ................................ 21
Chapter 5: Discussions, Recommendations of Resolving Ambiguities, and
Pedagogical Implications ........................................................................................ 25
5.1. Discussions ......................................................................................................... 25
5.2. Recommendations of resolving ambiguities ...................................................... 26
5.2.1. Resolving scope ambiguities ..................................................................... 26
5.2.2. Resolving referential ambiguities .............................................................. 26
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5.2.3. Resolving lexical ambiguities .................................................................... 27
5.2.4. Resolving structural ambiguities ............................................................... 27
5.3. Pedagogical implications.................................................................................... 28
Chapter 6: Limitations, Suggestions for Further Research and Conclusions ... 30
6.1. Limitations ......................................................................................................... 30
6.2. Suggestions for Further Research ...................................................................... 30
6.3. Conclusions ........................................................................................................ 31
References ................................................................................................................ 32
Appendix .................................................................................................................. 34

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LIST OF TABLES AND FIGURES
Table/Figure

Page

Table 4.1: Frequencies of structural ambiguity .......................................... 17
Table 4.2: Frequencies of scope ambiguity................................................. 18
Table 4.3: Frequencies of referential ambiguity ......................................... 18
Table 4.4: Frequencies of lexical ambiguity ............................................... 18
Figure 4.1: Number of ambiguous sentences .............................................. 19
Figure 4.2: Percentages of ambiguity types ................................................ 21
Figure 4.3: Frequencies of structural ambiguity types ................................ 24

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CHAPTER 1

INTRODUCTION
This chapter will address the rationale, research aims, the significance of the study, and the
organization of the thesis.

1.1 Rationale
Despite the fact that English Syntax is difficult to most English majors, it is still my
all-time favorite subject. I had never been so sensitized to the complexity of English
until attending the course. I had simply thought that language is a clear and literal
means for communication ideas; nevertheless, it was in the course that I discovered

that even when we use language literally, misunderstanding may arise and meanings
may shift (Clare, 2003; Jacobs, 2003). Therefore, it is obvious that such commonly
written sentences as (a) “Old men and women are served first” or (b) “My house is in
the park near the forest” may confuse readers because they are open to more than one
interpretation in meanings. That is, readers may understand sentence (a) in two ways:
(a1) Women and old men are served first and (a2) Old men and old women are served
first. Similarly, sentence (b) can be paraphrased as two ways: (b1) My house is in the
park which is near the forest and (b2) My house is in the park and near the forest.
Clearly, normally a word or syntactic structure has more than one meaning, in or in
spite of its context (Newmark, 2001). This phenomenon is part of language and
defined as ambiguity in language. As a result, towards a better communication in
which people understand each other without any barrier of language form and
structure, ambiguities should be treated as a problem to be solved by language learners
and users (Newmark, 2001; Clare, 2003; Jacobs, 2003).
The attraction of ambiguity has motivated me to constantly research into ways
ambiguities in English are made, fields they are employed, and strategies to
disambiguate ambiguities. It is amazing that ambiguities have been employed in many
fields, especially newspaper headlines, advertisement and poems to create dramatic
effects on readers. Both Hoenisch (2004) and Webber (2007) agree that lexical and

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structural ambiguities contribute to make newspaper headlines ambiguous and
humorous. Such headlines as (a) Iraqi heads seek arms and (b) Stolen painting found
by tree are typical examples of ambiguity application in this field. Headline (a) is
lexically ambiguous because the word “head” can be a chief or a head of a body and
the word “arms” can be both weapons and body parts. Also, headline (b) may be
understood as a stolen painting was found near a tree or a tree found a stolen
painting. In addition, puns which are resulted from ambiguities are frequently used in

advertisement deliberately (Nguyen, 2002). The sentence “It’s not worth dying for a
drink” is a good illustration of the use of ambiguity in the advertisement industry. The
phrase to die for a drink can be understood as to die because of a drink or to desire a
drink”. Therefore, we can paraphrase this sentence as it’s not worth dying because of a
drink or it’s not worth desiring a drink. Ambiguities also exist in poems like a poetic
vehicle although not everyone discovers them when reading (Tran, 2006). The
example “She lost the paradise with her first bite of the apple” which means “She lost
the paradise as soon as she first bit the apple” or “She lost the paradise because she
bit the apple” is a good evidence of ambiguities used in poems. Obviously,
ambiguities occur in many fields of life even when we do not recognize them.
Inspired by these interesting finds, I have conducted a small investigation into
ambiguities I have made in a number of the compositions that I have written so far. So
surprisingly, I found that I seemed to write without a thought of what I wrote may
have misled readers; a lot of ambiguous sentences were made in these compositions.
Many of them have later been improved according to the comments of my instructors;
others still remained unchanged because these ambiguities were not recognized then,
and if any, I did not know how to disambiguate them either. According to Norvig
(2006), although serious ambiguities may occur everywhere in sentences, not all
readers and listeners but only linguists find them ambiguous by careful analysis. It
means that sometimes ambiguity is not discovered by the people who make it, but it
may cause many problems when the others consider it to be ambiguous. Ambiguity is
then becoming a matter of concern for language learners and users; it is also a great
challenge for teachers of English (Jacobs, 2003). From a perspective of a learner, I
strongly believe that ambiguities are common and serious errors that may cause
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misunderstanding and misinterpretations; thus may disqualify the quality of a writing
(Newmark, 2001). This belief, together with my own interesting findings about
ambiguities in English, prompted me to conduct the research titled Types of Ambiguity

in Writing English by Sophomore Students of English Education at Can Tho
University.

1.2 Research aims
The research aims at two goals. First, it aims to investigate types of ambiguity
sophomore students of English Education at Can Tho University (CTU) make when
writing in English. Second, on the basis of the findings, recommendations of resolving
common types of ambiguities, and pedagogical implications will be proposed.

1.3 Significance of the study
The primary aim of the study is to investigate types of ambiguity by sophomore
English Education majors at CTU. The study, first of all, thus creates a great learning
opportunities for the researcher to enhance (a) a deeper understanding of conducting
research work and (b) deeply held knowledge of the research subject matter (i.e.,
ambiguity in English) through research activities (Feldman & Mc Phee, 2008).
Second, the findings of the study raise awareness among EFL teachers and students at
CTU of the current writing practices in term of writing errors, in particular, the ones
including ambiguities. Third, the inclusion of recommendation to resolve common
types of ambiguity found in the study contributes a helpful guidance to improve the
quality of the students’ writing.

1.4 Organization of the thesis
The study consists of six chapters.
Chapter 1 provides the rationale, the aims of the thesis, the significance of the
study, and the organization of the thesis.
Chapter 2 covers definitions of ambiguity, types of ambiguity, and an
ambiguity test.

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Chapter 3 describes the research method employed in the study. They are
research questions, the researcher’s hypotheses, research design, participants, research
instrument, and procedures of test administration.
Chapter 4 addresses the analysis and synthesis of data collected from the
instruments, that is, ambiguity types and frequencies of occurrence, and structural
ambiguity types and frequencies of occurrence.
Chapter 5 presents discussions, recommendations of resolving ambiguities,
and pedagogical implications.
Chapter 6 includes limitations of the study, suggestions for further research,
and conclusions.

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CHAPTER 2

LITERATURE REVIEW
In this chapter, definitions of ambiguity will be first addressed. Then ambiguity types and
an ambiguity test will be presented.

2.1 Definitions of ambiguity
To describe and explain ambiguities in language is one of the goals of semantic
theory (Zhang, 2007). Thus, many linguists have studied and defined the term
ambiguity in their own ways. According to Bach (1994), ambiguity is a word, a
phrase, or a sentence having more than one meaning. Clare (2003) states that
something is ambiguous when it can be understood in two or more possible senses or
ways. Similarly, Jacobs (2003), To (2004) and Zhang (2007) define that ambiguity is
open more than one interpretation or more than one possible meaning. Newmark
(2001) also defines that ambiguity, in the sense of a stretch of a second language text,

is normally a word or syntactic structure having apparently more than one meaning
in or in spite of its context. It is obvious that these definitions of ambiguity are
slightly different in the way they are stated, but not the nature ambiguity itself. In
general, ambiguity is a phenomenon of having or expressing more than one possible
meaning.
There are three important points that not only linguists but also any language
learners have to notice about ambiguities. First, ambiguity is always concerned with
meaning regardless of what type of ambiguity it is (Tran, 2006). Second, almost every
word or expression or 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 senses
(Zhang, 2007). In other words, ambiguity exists only when a word or a phrase or a
sentence has at least two specific meanings that make sense in context. Third,
ambiguity and vagueness should be differentiated from each other. Though seemingly
synonymous in common usage, they are entirely different but very important problems
in critical thinking. This means although words that are vague and words that are

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ambiguous are hard to define without context and sometimes even with context, they
are completely not the same (Payne, 2010). While ambiguity is a phenomenon of
having at least two specific meanings that make sense in context, vagueness is
concerned with any word or phrase that is not clear in context. To be more clearly,
words or phrases or sentences are considered vague when they are not specific enough
to clearly cover all cases. That is to say, if someone doesn’t know what is meant by a
phrase, then that phrase is vague to him/her. On the contrary, if he/she doesn’t know
which of two or more specific meanings is intended by this phrase, then it is
ambiguous to him/her.
In the next part, types of ambiguity will be addressed in a detailed discussion.

2.2 Types of ambiguity
From different points of view, ambiguity can be variously classified by different
linguists. Almost these linguists provided clear definitions and appropriate
illustrations for their classification.
According to Bach (1994), To (2004), Tran (2006) and Zhang (2007), there are
two types of ambiguity: lexical and structural.
(1) Lexical ambiguity is a phenomenon resulted from sentences which have more
than one meaning because of the polysemy or homonyms in these sentences
(Tran, 2006). Two good examples of this ambiguity type are (a) “That robot is
bright” and (b) “She cannot bear children”. In sentence (a), the adjective
“bright” is a polysemous word which has two slightly different but closely
related meanings: shining and intelligent. Therefore, the robot may be
understood to be shining or intelligent. Sentence (b) can be interpreted in two
different ways because the two verbs “bear 1” means “tolerate” and “bear 2”
means “give birth to”. They are two homonyms that make the sentence
logically ambiguous.
(2) Structural ambiguity is the one that does not lie in the words but rests on two
or more possibilities of relationship of modification among words contained in
the sentence (Zhang, 2007). In other words, structural ambiguity is a
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phenomenon resulted from sentences which have more than one meaning
because the structures in these sentences can be interpreted in different ways
(Tran, 2006). This ambiguity type occurs when a phrase or a sentence has more
than one underlying structure (Bach, 1994). It is illustrated by two good
examples (a) “The chicken is ready to eat” (Bach, 1994) which could be used
to describe either a hungry chicken or a boiled chicken and (b) “Last week at
the beach, I saw the man eating fish” (Tran, 2006) which can be understood to

be “to see the man who is eating fish” or “to see a kind of fish that eats man”.
Codish and Shiffman (1995) classify ambiguities into 3 types: lexical, syntactic
and pragmatic.
(1)

Lexical ambiguity is the “classic” form of ambiguity in which a

word can be interpreted in more than one way, such as the word “bank” in
the sentence “I will meet you at the bank”.
(2)

Syntactic ambiguity is caused when the structure or the syntax of a

statement is ambiguous. This can occur when punctuation or connectors in
a statement leave its meaning unclear. An example is “A or B and C”
without clarifying whether this means “(A or B) and C” or “A or (B and
C)”.
(3)

Pragmatic ambiguity occurs when two or more interpretations of

meanings are provided. It refers to usage, as in saying on Wednesday: “See
you next Friday”. We do not know whether the speaker means to meet in
two days (i.e., this week’s Friday) or in nine days (i.e., next week’s
Friday).
Newmark (2001) suggests that there are seven types of ambiguity.
(1)

Lexical ambiguity may result from words having many senses or

meanings.
(2)

Grammatical ambiguity, which is also called structural or

syntactic ambiguity, usually occurs within the context of a poorly written
sentence. For example, both notorious ambiguous groups as “John’s

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book”, “slow neutrons and protons” and the less obvious ones as “modern
language teaching” are considered good illustrations of this ambiguity.
(3)

Pragmatic ambiguity is similar in all language, provided that

they are relatively culture-free. This ambiguity type is inevitably more
common in written than in spoken language because the tone or the
emphasis in a second language is not clear. The sense of “Goodnight” was
widely understood as “Hello” or “Goodbye” when the day time is relevant.
(4)

Cultural ambiguity may arise if the function or the substance of

a cultural feature changes at a point of time and the term remains whilst
the period background is not clear in the second language text.
(5)

Idiolectal ambiguity occurs when a word used inappropriately

and commonly in many situations although the users have never looked
them up in a dictionary but have used them as a habit.
(6)

Referential ambiguity occurs when a sense of ambiguity prompts

two or more images of the reality which the translator is trying to describe.
(7)

Metaphorical ambiguity can be found in most sentences that are

hard enough to be examined their meanings.
Unlike Newmark (2001), Hoenisch (2004) classifies ambiguity into four types.
(1) Lexical ambiguity is the result of words having more than one
possible meaning. For example, the word bank in sentence “John went to
the bank” causes lexical ambiguity because it provides two different
meanings the edge of the river or the financial institution.
(2) Syntactic ambiguity is the result of phrases or sentences that can be
understood in more than one way as in the example “put the box on the
table in the kitchen”. The sentence may be paraphrased as put the box on
the table which is in the kitchen or take the box on the table and put it in
the kitchen.
(3) Local ambiguity is the one cleared up once we have heard or read the
whole sentence. For example, the word “train” in “the old train” can be
considered to be “a means of transportation” or “guide”. However, this
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phrase is not ambiguous once we hear or read the whole sentence “the old

train left the station” or “the old train the young”.
(4) Global ambiguity remains even after the entire sentence has been
heard or read. The sentence “I know more beautiful women than Julia” is
considered to be globally ambiguous because this could mean “I know
women who are more beautiful than Julia” or “I know more beautiful
women than Julia does”. We hardly know which meaning this sentence
attempts to express even though we hear or read it carefully.
According to Webber (2007), ambiguities are of three types.
(1) Lexical ambiguity is defined as a word associated with more one part
of speech or with more than one sense.
(2) Structural ambiguity is defined as a string of words associated with
more than one structure; and these structures are often represented by
constituent structure trees.
(3) Semantic ambiguity occurs when the same structures and word senses
can still have multiple interpretations. This ambiguity type consists of
Scope ambiguity and Referential ambiguity.
(a) Scope ambiguity is defined as a word that can operate on the meanings
of other words and structures, and hence may produce ambiguity. For
example, the word “not” in the following example “David did not take
the bus to the zoo” causes scope ambiguity because we can understand
that “He did not take the bus to the zoo but he drove there” or “He did
not take the bus to the zoo but he took it to somewhere” or “He did not
take the bus to the zoo but he stayed at home”. In other words, different
scopes of negation cause different meanings.
(b) Referential ambiguity occurs when a term can refer to several entities
of a sentence, so this sentence produces different interpretations. The
sentence “David hid the keys of Fred’s car because he was drunk” is a
good example of this ambiguity type. Considering the sentence, it’s hard

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for us to know whether “he” is David or Fred. Therefore, he is a term
that makes the sentence to be referential ambiguous.
As mentioned earlier, ambiguity is always concerned with meaning. In addition,
all of the linguists agree that although ambiguous words or ambiguous sentences can
be understood in many ways, the speaker of these has one meaning in mind. That is,
only one of meanings corresponds to what the speaker intends.
Ambiguities resulted from meanings of words or expressions are called lexical
ones, whereas structural ambiguities caused by a sentence which has more than one
underlying structure, is called syntactic or grammatical. In addition, a word which can
be more than one part of speech may result in both lexical and structural ambiguity.
For example, sentences as (a) “Tom fed her dog biscuit” (Tran, 2006, p. 40) and (b)
“We saw her duck” (Zhang, 2007, p. 5) are considered to be ambiguous in terms of
both lexical and structural because the word her may be an objective pronoun or a
possessive adjective. Therefore, sentence (a) can be understood as “Tom gave dog
biscuit to her” or “Tom gave biscuit to her dog”. Similarly, sentence (b) can be
interpreted as “We saw her quickly lower her head” or “We saw the duck of hers”. It is
thus hard to draw a clear line between lexical and structural ambiguities if these two
terms coexist in one sentence (Newmark, 2001).
Although referential ambiguity is not always mentioned by these linguists, it is
serious and pertinent to be solved because we hardly interpret the sentence accurately
if it is referentially ambiguous (Webber, 2007). Like referential ambiguity, local and
global ones are not paid much attention by language users though they obviously exist
in all languages (Hoenisch, 2004). Scope ambiguities are mostly resulted from two
elements. The first is an adverb of frequency followed by two verbs as always eat pies
and refuse milk (Nguyen & Huynh, 2008) in which always may modify eat or both eat
and refuse. The second is negative words in a sentence as no, not, hardly which may
make the sentence ambiguous because no one knows which of the parts in a sentence
or even the whole sentences is negated, so different scopes of negation also cause

ambiguity (Webber, 2007). In addition, although scope ambiguity type does not

15


usually result in serious problems to users, it is very difficult for them to avoid
because they cannot always produce affirmative sentences. It is also hard to
disambiguate an ambiguous negative sentence since such sentence usually consists of
several parts. Therefore, we hardly know that the negative word attempts to negate
whether one part or whole sentence.
Lexical ambiguous sentences after being added more context to be
disambiguated are locally ones, as sentence She cannot bear children is lexical
ambiguity; however, once it is added because children are noisy, it becomes a locally
ambiguous sentence because the word bear means tolerate. To be specific, the whole
sentence She cannot bear children because they are noisy is not lexical but local
ambiguity because the meaning of this sentence is clear once we read the whole
sentence. Since both local and global ambiguous sentences are considered to be
ambiguous or disambiguous only when we finish hearing or reading the whole
sentence, both of them can simultaneously be any other types of ambiguity such as
structural, lexical, referential, scope and so on.
How to identify and resolve ambiguity even though it is so complex and hard is
very important to language users. Kempson (1996) designed an ambiguity test which
suggests principles to help language users test whether or not a sentence is ambiguous.
The ambiguity test will be introduced in the next section.

2.3 An ambiguity test
An ambiguity test is the one which helps to distinguish between sentences which are
ambiguous and sentences which are not, and helps to separate out cases of vagueness
from cases of ambiguity, and which will give us some basis for deciding on the less
clear cases (Kempson, 1996).

Since ambiguities are usually hard to identify, language users should examine
any phrase or sentence carefully before determining them to be ambiguous. In order to
distinguish sentences which are ambiguous from sentences which are not, we should
examine carefully the processes which refer back to an earlier part of the sentence. For

16


example, the expression “to do so too” in “John killed a bird today and so did Susie”
(Kempson, 1996, p. 131) leads to the meaning that “Not only John but also Susie
killed a bird today”, so this sentence is not ambiguous. In contrast, this expression in
the sentence “Terry loves his wife and so do I” (Nguyen & Huynh, 2008, p. 12) causes
ambiguity because we hardly know for sure that whether “I also love Terry’s wife” or
“I also love my wife”. Thus, two sentences which have the same structure are not
always simultaneously ambiguous (Kempson, 1996). This principle is good for both
language learners and users to identify ambiguities and differentiate them from nonambiguous cases.
As mentioned in section 2.1, ambiguity and vagueness confuse learners although
they are not identical. Therefore, we should be certain of separating out cases of
vagueness from cases of ambiguity. In order to distinguish ambiguity from vagueness,
we have to find how many meanings the words or sentences provide. If there is more
than one meaning in them, this is concluded that there is some ambiguity in the words
or sentences. In contrast, if we do not know what meaning these words or sentences
attempt to express, this is a case of vagueness. For example, “She likes xxx” is vague
because no one knows what she likes, person or thing or flower, while “We watched
the hunters with binoculars” is structurally ambiguous because “with binoculars” is
either an adjective phrase to be the post-nominal modifier of the noun phrase the
hunters or an adverb phrase to be the optional adjunct of means of the verb watched.
In summary, ambiguity deals with a variety of interpretations in meanings.
Regardless of how many meanings which are interpreted, there is only one precise
meaning that is intended by the speaker or writer. Ambiguities are classified into a

number of classifications (i.e., lexical, structural, scope, referential, local, global,
pragmatic, cultural, idolectal, metaphorical). However, lexical, structural, scope and
referential ambiguities are more popular, and more pertinent to be disambiguated
(Newmark, 2001; Jacobs, 2003). Thus, these four ambiguity types will be analyzed
and reported in the chapter of research results. These ambiguity types are defined
shortly as (1) lexical ambiguity is caused by homonyms or polysemy in a sentence, (2)
structural ambiguity occurs when a structure has more than one underlying
17


interpretation, (3) referential ambiguity is resulted from a word which may refer to
more than one term of a sentence, and (4) scope ambiguity usually occurs in sentences
which consist of adverb of frequency followed by two verbs, or negative words. Since
ambiguous sentences resulted from words which can be more than one part of speech
are both lexical and structural, the researcher considers these sentences lexical
ambiguity so that it is easier to classify ambiguity types found from the results of
research instrument. In the procedures of identifying ambiguities, the researcher
employs the ambiguity test by Kempson (1996) to collect all of ambiguities in terms
of lexical, structural, referential and scope.

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CHAPTER 3

RESEARCH METHODOLOGY
This chapter will present the research method employed in this study. There are six parts in
this chapter: research questions, the researcher’s hypotheses, research design, participants,
research instruments, and procedures of test administration.

3.1 Research questions
This research is guided by two research questions:
(1). Do sophomore students of English Education CTU make ambiguities when they are
writing in English?
(2). What types of ambiguity are made by the students?

3.2 Hypotheses
Basing on the related literature and the research questions, the researcher hypothesizes
that (a) sophomore TEFL majors at CTU would make ambiguities in writing in
English, and (b) more structural and scope ambiguities would be made than
referential and lexical.

3.3 Research design
This research follows a descriptive design in which the types of ambiguity sophomore
TEFL majors at CTU make when writing in English are investigated.

In this descriptive research, both qualitative and quantitative approaches to collect
and analyze data were employed. That is, the data were analyzed first qualitatively to
discover and describe the types of ambiguity. Then, these types of ambiguities were
quantified as descriptive statistics in terms of frequencies.

3.4 Participants
29 English Education majors course 34 at CTU were invited to participate in this research.
Their ages are commonly from 20 to 21. One of them has studied English for 11 years, 27
studied have studied English for 9 years and only one has studied English for 5 years.

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The participants were selected for the following criteria:

(1) They have completed three modules of English Grammar in Use in which
they have been introduced to English ambiguities.
(2) They have trained in writing paragraphs and essays in English.
(3) They are willing to participate in the research and interested in research work.

3.5 Research instrument
In order to answer the two research questions, a standardized test on writing (i.e.,
TOEFL writing test) was employed to collect the data on the types of ambiguity made
by the participants. The researcher decided to adopt the standardized test for 3
principal reasons:
(1)

It is generally professionally constructed by testing experts (Shohamy &
Seliger, 2000).

(2)

It is used to compare student performance across large population of
learners, not to measure individual student performance against standards set
by a personal instructor (Feldman & Mc Phee, 2008).

(3)

It ensures the reliability and the validity so it can always give the same
kind of data for the researchers (Shohamy & Seliger, 2000).

The test results of 29 participants were collected and analyzed with the aid of
descriptive statistics SPSS: Statistic Package for the Social Science.

3.6 Procedures of test administration

First, under the permission of the instructor of the course English Writing 4, the
researcher met the participants in their classroom and asked them for their agreement
to participate in the study. Then, the researcher set a date to deliver the test. Before the
participants actually did the writing test, they were provided clear instructions on the
purpose of the test (i.e., research purpose), the test task (i.e., writing an essay), and the
scoring method. For the study purpose (i.e., investigating ambiguity types made by the
participants), the test responses were not scored right or wrong (i.e., right/wrong
scoring) or awarded partial credit in terms of corrections (i.e., partial credit scoring).

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The test responses were collected after two days. Then each test response (i.e., essay)
was carefully studied to sort out and analyze the types of ambiguity the participants
made. Finally, the frequencies of occurrence of these types were analyzed using SPSS.

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CHAPTER 4

RESULTS
In this chapter, the researcher will report the results of the data collected from the writing
test. First, ambiguity types and frequencies of occurrence will be specified. Then, structural
ambiguity types and frequencies of occurrence will be addressed.

4.1 Ambiguity types and frequencies of occurrence
To investigate what types of ambiguity the participants make, the following TOEFL
writing test was administered.
“Some people think that they can learn better by themselves than with a teacher. Others

think that it is always better to have a teacher. Which do you prefer? Use specific
reasons to develop your essay.” (Pyle and Page, 2002, p. 675)

For the purpose of the study, only four types of ambiguity (i.e., structural,
referential, scope and lexical) in the essays were examined. Such mistakes and errors
as word choice, spelling, collocations, and grammatical structures were not regarded.
The data were collected from 29 essays of the participants. Each essay was
carefully studied in terms of ambiguity types and the frequencies of these types. The
data gained from the essay analysis were subjected to SPSS for the mean frequencies
of ambiguities.
With regard to the percentage of the participants who made any of the four
ambiguity types, the result showed that (1) all of them made structural ambiguities, (2)
20 scope, (3) 7 referential, and (4) 2 lexical. The following are four tables which
illustrate clearly the findings. An “x” symbolizes the essays in which ambiguities were
employed.
Table 4.1. Frequencies of Structural Ambiguity

Frequency
Valid

x

29

Percent

100.0

22

Table 4.2. Frequencies of Scope Ambiguity
Frequency
Valid

Percent
9

31

x

20

69

Total

29

100.0

Table 4.3. Frequencies of Referential Ambiguity

Frequency
22

Valid

x

Total

Percent
75.9

7

24.1

29

100.0

Table 4.4. Frequencies of Lexical Ambiguity

Frequency
27

Valid

x
Total

Percent
93.1

2

6.9

29

100.0

It can be seen from Table 1 that all of the participants made structural
ambiguities. This affirms the researcher’s first hypothesis that sophomore English
Education majors would make ambiguities in their writing in English. In addition, the
four tables showed that (1) 100% of the participants made structural (2) 69% scope,
(3) 24.1% referential, and (4) 6.9% lexical. This means structural and scope
ambiguities were more frequently employed than referential and lexical. Therefore,
this finding also confirms the researcher’s second hypothesis (i.e., more structural and
scope ambiguities would be made than referential and lexical),
Concerning ambiguous sentences, 104 ones were found. The following chart
presents the number sentences classified according to four types of ambiguity (i.e.,
structural, scope, referential and lexical).

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Ambiguous
Sentences

80

71

70
60
structural

50

scope

40

referential

24
30
20

lexical
7

2

10
0

Figure 4.1. Number of ambiguous sentences

As can be seen from the Figure 4.1, there were 71 structural ambiguous
sentences, 24 scope, 7 referential and 2 lexical found. The chart and statistics indicate
that structural ambiguities were employed the most commonly. That the frequency
decreases from scope to referential and then lexical indicates that the participants
made scope referential ambiguities more frequently than they did referential and
lexical, and lexical ambiguities were the least common. Therefore, the statistics
confirm more exactly the researcher’s second hypothesis. In addition, as mentioned
earlier, 71 structural ambiguous sentences were found in 29 essays and 24 scope

ambiguous ones in 20 essays. The findings show that there was more than one
structural as well as scope ambiguous sentence in each essay.
With regard to the causes of these ambiguities, the analyses showed that
structural ambiguous sentences were resulted from seven causes, while scope
ambiguities were of two causes; referential and lexical ambiguities were of only one
cause. The following sentences taken from the essays are considered to be ambiguous.
To understand why they are ambiguous, the explanations are also given.
(1) Structural ambiguous sentences were resulted from seven causes. The
following are two typical causes.
24