Ambiguity: Insight from the English of Unizik Students

Abstract

Ambiguity in language has been defined by Webster (1992:18) as “the quality of having more than one meaning: an idea, statement or expression capable of of being understood in more than one sense.” ambiguity in terms of structure would involve the ability of that structure to be assigned to two or more phrase markers. When a lexical item can be assigned two or more interpretations, it means that the lexical item is ambiguous. Producing ambigious items or sentences is often an unintentional act; though it seldom employed as an artistic device. (maduike, 2001). Most often Nigerians unintentionally use ambiguous lexical items and sentences when they speak or write in English. This often leads to a situation where what the speaker /writer intends is not what the hearer/reader understands . One would think that errors in the light of ambiguity in the use of English as a second language are committed by people with less than secondary school education. However, the error analysis of the scripts of some thirty students of the department of linguistics, Nnamdi Azikiwe University (UNIZIK), Awka shows that these students commit errors of both lexical and structural ambiguity. The main aim of this paper is to help students to be aware and conscious of their errors for them to improve on their use of English.