Hostname: page-component-cd9895bd7-dzt6s Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-12-25T06:31:34.717Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

The translator’s sensitivity to syntactic ambiguity—a psycholinguistics experiment*

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  27 June 2016

Elyse Piquette
Elyse Piquette*
Affiliation:
McGill University
Get access Rights & Permissions [Opens in a new window]

Extract

Transformational grammar has attempted to outline the systematic nature of language structure while also stressing the creative aspect of language. Language is systematic in that speakers use a finite number of means to make up their messages, and yet it is creative in that there are an infinite number of individual different messages which are possible in any natural language. In natural languages, however, there is not a perfect one-to-one correspondence between possible messages—intended or perceived—and possible linguistic realizations, as there exists in conventional or artificial languages. Often it is found in natural languages that a single linguistic form may have two or more meanings. Homonymy, whether it is lexical or syntactic, is an important notion, not only because syntactic ambiguity plays a central role in linguistic theory, but also because its study gives us a better understanding of the systematics of language and of the way we attach meaning to linguistic representations. Hence, the importance of evaluating how speakers deal with syntactic ambiguity in their attempts to understand and to be understood.

Type
Research Article
Information
Canadian Journal of Linguistics/Revue canadienne de linguistique , Volume 21 , Issue 1 , Spring 1976 , pp. 95 - 106
Copyright
Copyright © Canadian Linguistic Association 1976

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

Footnotes

*

A substantially similar version of this paper was presented bilingually under the title ‘The translator’s sensitivity to syntactic ambiguity—L’aptitude du traducteur à déceler l’ambiguïté syntaxique’ to the 1975 Annual Meeting of the Canadian Linguistic Association in Edmonton, Alberta. I am very grateful to Wm. J. Baker and Gary D. Prideaux for computerizing part of the data, and to them both as well as to G. Richard Tucker, Robert Sarrasin, and Brian Harris for valuable comments and criticism at various stages of this study. This research was carried out with the help of doctoral fellowships from the Canada Council and the Quebec Department of Education (Direction générale de l’Enseignement supérieur) for 1974-75, and the generous collaboration of the Notre Dame Secretarial School in Montreal.

References

Carey, Peter W., Mehler, Jacques, & Bever, Thomas G. 1970 When do we compute all the interpretations of an ambiguous sentence? in Advances in Psycholinguistics. Edited by d’Arcais, Giovanni B. Flores and Levelt, Willem J. M.. Amsterdam: North-Holland Publishing Co., pp. 61–75.Google Scholar
Carnap, Rudolf 1937 The Logical Syntax of Language. New York: Harcourt, Brace, and Co.Google Scholar
Chomsky, Noam 1957 Syntactic Structures. The Hague: Mouton.Google Scholar
Chomsky, Noam 1965 Aspects of the theory of syntax. Cambridge: M.I.T. Press.Google Scholar
Garrett, Merrill F. 1970 Does ambiguity complicate the perception of sentences? in Advances in Psycholinguistics. Edited by d’Arcais, Giovanni B. Flores and Levelt, Willem J. M.. Amsterdam: North-Holland Publishing Co., pp. 49–60.Google Scholar
Gougenheim, Georges 1958 Dictionnaire fondamental de la langue française. Edition revue et augmentée. Paris: Didier.Google Scholar
Hankamer, J. 1973 Unacceptable Ambiguity, in Linguistic Inquiry, IV:1, pp. 17–69.Google Scholar
Katz, J.J. 1965 The Philosophy of Language. New York: Harper and Row.Google Scholar
Kooij, Jan G. 1971 Ambiguity in Natural Language: an investigation of certain problems in its linguistic description. Amsterdam and London: North-Holland Publishing Co.Google Scholar
Lakoff, George 1970 A Note on Vagueness and Ambiguity, in Linguistic Inquiry, 1:3, pp. 357–9.Google Scholar
Lakoff, Robin 1971 If’s, And’s, and But’s about Conjunction, in Studies in Linguistic Semantics. Edited by Fillmore, C. J. and Langendoen, D. T.. New York: Holt, Rinehart, and Winston, Inc., pp. 114–49.Google Scholar
Mackay, D. G. 1966 To end ambiguous sentences, in Perception and Psychophysics, I, pp. 426–36.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Mackay, D. G. & Bever, T. G. 1967 In search of ambiguity, in Perception and Psychophysics, II, pp. 193–200.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Patel, P. G. 1974 An analysis of the notion ‘Structural Ambiguity’. Unpublished Ph.D. dissertation, University of Alberta.Google Scholar
Piquette, Elyse (to appear) Réflexions sur l’ambiguïté syntaxique à la lumière d’une expérience faisant appel à la traduction, in Psycholinguistique expérimentale et théorique. Edited by Sarrasin, Robert. Montréal: Presses de l’Université du Québec.Google Scholar
Postal, Paul M. 1974 On certain ambiguities, in Linguistic Inquiry, V:3, pp. 367–424.Google Scholar
Prideaux, Gary D. & Baker, Wm. J. (to appear) The Recognition of Ambiguity, in Experimental Linguistics. Edited by Prideaux, Gary D., Derwing, Bruce L., and Baker, Wm. J.. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.Google Scholar