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Advances in Social Sciences Research Journal – Vol. 9, No. 4

Publication Date: April 25, 2022

DOI:10.14738/assrj.94.12140. Malikzadeh, A. T. (2022). Ambiguity as a Natural Outcome of Language Evolution Serving the Communicative Function. Advances

in Social Sciences Research Journal, 9(4). 297-302.

Services for Science and Education – United Kingdom

Ambiguity as a Natural Outcome of Language Evolution Serving

the Communicative Function

Aydan Tahir Malikzadeh

PhD student

The department of Grammar at Azerbaijan University of Languages

Head teacher at Azerbaijan University of Economics

ABSTRACT

While defining language, its being a means of communication is always highlighted.

Languages have evolved to allow individuals to express themselves and exchange

information. Having said that, it is questioned why languages, as a primary tool for

communication, are full of ambiguities occurring at almost all linguistic levels. To

answer this question, this paper attempts to analyze the concept of linguistic

ambiguity examining its role and function in the language. For achieving this

purpose, the concept of ambiguity has been explained thoroughly and argued that

despite some occasional misunderstandings in communication, ambiguity is a merit

of a language rather than a drawback for humans who have inherent and

sophisticated cognitive mechanisms to understand what is meant. The claim that

ambiguity is a curse not a blessing is applicable to computer sciences where Natural

Language Processing is inhibited due to ambiguity. Arising from the disproportion

between linguistic items and realities, ambiguity should be regarded as a natural

evolutionary outcome thanks to which easier and shorter words are reused making

the language more efficient.

Key words: ambiguity, meaning, multiple, language, function, communication

INTRODUCTION

As known, ambiguity means a double or multiple meaning. Being a pervasive phenomenon in

language, it occurs at all levels of linguistic analysis. For example, [teɪl] is ambiguous in oral

speech either meaning “a tale” or “a tail”. In the sentence “She cannot bear children” “bear” is

lexically ambiguous between the meanings “to accept, tolerate, or endure something, especially

something unpleasant” or “to give birth to young, or (of a tree or plant) to give or produce fruit

or flowers”. (https://dictionary.cambridge.org/dictionary/english/bear) Also, “The shooting

of the hunters was terrible” [Chomsky, 2002, p. 53] is syntactically ambiguous as the same

sentence can have two distinct sentence trees.

THE AMBIGUITY PHENOMENON IN LANGUAGE

In order to be able to identify its function in languages, we should first analyze ambiguity as a

linguistic phenomenon. The popular question whether ambiguity is a curse or a blessing is one

of the debatable issues in linguistics. Natural languages are said to be highly ambiguous and

many wonder why. One may claim that the factors behind ambiguity do not matter too much,

because, normally, we are hardwired to resolve the ambiguity and understand the intended

meaning. For example, while reading the ambiguous newspaper headline “Two sisters reunited