Some Aspects of Ambiguity and Ways of Disambiguation
康司 加島 · Institutional Repositories DataBase (IRDB) · 1988
1． 1 would like to point out three seemingly contradictory characteristics of ambig uity． The first-cha racteristic is that ambig uity is the inevitability of lang uage but that we don't suffer any inconvenience in our daily life． Withoqt consulting dictionaries we know that almost all words have plural meanings． This is called economy of lang uage． lf each word had only one meaning， lang uage would be a severe burden on our memory． Therefore， the economy of lang uage is not a defect but a cha racteristic of g reat importance which makes lang uage very effective' D ln other words， polysemy is a very important cha racteristic in natura1 lang uage． The economy of lang uage is true not only of the lexical level but also of the syntactic level． To g ive an example， Chomsky's famous sentence， Flying planes can be dangerous， is interpretable at・ least in' @two ways． i)