Ambiguity in the Use of Pronouns

Posted: January 4th, 2023

Ambiguity in the Use of Pronouns

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I. INTRODUCTION

A pronoun is defined as a word used as a substitution or a replacement for a noun or another pronoun. The commonly used pronouns are we, I, they, it, he, she, those, these, what, and who [1].  Pronouns makes a writer’s or a reader’s lives easier by enabling them to simplify their sentences while at the same time avoiding repetition.  An example of a repetitive sentence that lacks a pronoun would be “The father told the father’s daughter that the father wanted the father’s daughter to clean the house.” The sentence sounds repetitive and awkward. Here is how using a pronoun can change the sentence, “The father told his daughter that he wanted her to clean the house.”  From the above example, it is clear that the use of a pronoun makes a sentence easier to read and understand. A pronoun, for example, “she” tends to be a more generic word than the represented noun (for instance, Sarah). As a result, one should ensure that the pronoun they choose maps onto just one noun. This means that every pronoun used has a clear antecedent, which is a key to clear writing. The failure to pair a pronoun with its antecedent can cause trouble in writing, leading to a misunderstanding [2]. To understand ambiguity in pronouns, however, it is essential first to understand the concept of ambiguity.

A. Ambiguity

As explained by Athertone [3], ambiguity refers to a type of meaning whereby a resolution, statement, or phrase is inexplicitly clarified, thus making specific explanations believable. Uncertainty is one of the common elements of ambiguity. To simplify the meaning of ambiguity, the author states that it is an aspect of any statement or idea whose projected meaning is hard to resolve using a particular rule or specific steps [3]. The ambi- in ambiguous means two, in this case, two meanings. It is important to note that context plays a role in ambiguity since an idea or a statement can be ambiguous in one context, but clear in another. An example of an ambiguous sentence is, “I rode a white polo horse in blue pajamas”. In this sentence, it is easy to think that the polo horse had worn blue pajamas. The sentence is unambiguous when written, “Wearing pajamas, I rode a white polo horse.” In addition, similar words that hold different meanings can be a source of ambiguity in a sentence, but in this case, the context in which the term is used can resolve the ambiguity. 

1) Ambiguity in Semantic: Semantics in a language lays emphasis on how meaning is studied. One challenge that linguists face when trying to explain ‘meaning’ is ambiguity. Hoffman, Lambon, and Rogers [4] point out that defining ‘meaning’ gives more than twenty definitions, which reflect the confusion caused by such a basic term, hence ambiguity.

Ambiguity in semantics usually occurs in a language, for example, a word like organ has two English meanings, either a musical instrument or a body part. However, a word can also cross language boundaries in a way that two different languages can share that word but with different meanings. An example of a shared word in English and Dutch is “angel.” “Angel” in Dutch means “Sting.” People who speak different languages encounter ambiguity in their communications and across languages as well. According to Beekhuizen, Cui, and Stevenson [5], when words have two or more meanings, then they are referred to as polysemous words. Almost all English words have multiple meanings, implying that nearly all sentences have semantic ambiguity. Semantic ambiguity is resolved using context, although this may not be a solution in all cases. A word like “play” is a polysemy. One can play a game, play a guitar, play a role, or play the victim. 

As posited by Haro and Ferré [6], there are semantic concepts and terms which represent the basis of semantics theory like vagueness, connotation and denotation, utterance, paraphrase, and entailment among others. However, most of these concepts have the least connection with ambiguity. Semantic ambiguity can be understood from two perspectives: sentence ambiguity and word ambiguity. The Netbase Staff [7] argue that ambiguous words in a particular sentence can make it congruently unclear. For example, the word “spring” can have different meanings when used in a sentence based on non-verbal and verbal cues in the context in which it is used. 

2) Concept of the ambiguity:Ambiguity is, in most cases, compared with vagueness. However, distinct and specific interpretations are allowed in ambiguity, while with vague information, it is hard to achieve any interpretation of the required specificity level. According to The Netbase Staff [7], ambiguity in language processing extends beyond the lexical type, which will further be explained in the types of ambiguity. This implies that ambiguity affects even morphemes, which are smaller units than words. Morphemes tend to show a particular kind of uncertainty in meaning, which is referred to as syncretism. Ambiguity in morphemes happens in cases where more than two morphological elements have a similar form. Other kinds of ambiguity exist, which are made of bigger units, and these are syntactic and semantic ambiguity.

Theorists have found the importance of distinguishing the ambiguity phenomenon from other phenomena such as context-sensitivity, vagueness, and underspecification. Philosophers are interested in understanding ambiguity for a number of reasons, one being that it clarifies the existing differences between natural and formal languages [8]. The second reason is that uncertainty may have a damaging impact on individuals’ capacity to examine the rationality of ideas based on conceivable equivocation. The third reason is that ambiguity is a vital element of an individual’s interpretive capacity as well as cognitive understanding. Fourth, it can deliberately heighten one’s interest in artwork by not allowing easy interpretation or categorization. Lastly, ambiguity can weaken the applicability of laws and peoples’ willingness to follow them. Understanding the concept of uncertainty and how it is resolved can provide an insight into both interpretations and thoughts.

3) Types of Ambiguity: The following are the types of ambiguity-:

a) Semantic ambiguity: This type of ambiguity happens when sentences have more than just one way of reading them within their contexts [6]. This can occur when some quantifiers appear in the same sentence. For example, “all people have medical cover in Malaysia.” The sentence can be interpreted in two ways- one which is “every person in the country has individual medical insurance coverage” or “all people have the same medical cover.” 

b) Structural/Syntactic ambiguity: Syntactic ambiguity is noted when particular word sequences have different grammatical structures but hold different meanings. An example of these words is “a big Toyota factory” to mean both “big (Toyota factory)” and (big Toyota) factory. 

c) Lexical ambiguity: This type of ambiguity is noted when a word contains several meanings. For example, a word like “green” could mean “immature” or “green color.” Lexical ambiguity also occurs when words of diverse origin have similar pronunciation or spelling like “bank” for a building and “bank” for “riverbank”. As Levison [9] notes, homophonous entries are contained in a unit called a lexicon. Homophones can be co-spelled but have different syntactic categories or meanings. For instance, a word like “object” is both a noun and a verb. Another noun like “bow” has more than one meaning and is also a verb.  Lexical ambiguity is easily detectible, particularly if the meanings are very different. However, it can prove difficult if a word has closely related meanings. A simple example of such a word is “in” whose meaning is ambiguous and appears to rotate around containments, which can seem to be different if looked from a more fine-grained point of view. A person can be “in the hospital, in California, or in therapy.” The examples show that “in” is an ambiguous word. 

d) Pragmatic ambiguity; This type of ambiguity is notable in sentences that have several meanings, given the context in which an individual speaks it. An example of pragmatic ambiguity in a sentence is, “The doctors can treat the patients before they leave.” The word “they” in the sentence could refer to both the doctors and the patients. 

e) Vagueness is another type of ambiguity that is identified when a phrase in a sentence has one meaning from an analytical perspective but can be interpreted differently when required.

f) Language error: This type of ambiguity represents grammatically incorrect constructions. 

Among the challenges of accounting for ambiguity in grammatical sentences or language is trying to find out the ambiguous objects. For instance, words like propositions are clear, given that it is not easy to subject their meanings to more discussions of their meaning. This then leaves a number of prospective objects such as inscriptions, utterances, or sentences that are relative to a context, among other potential objects.

The differences, as Kurniasari [10] believes, are not inconsequential, meaning that a sentence that is written down can correspond to several ways of being spoken whereby characteristics like prosody can hinder several meanings being enjoyed by that specific sentence.

An important factor regarding the concept of ambiguity is how people should denote ambiguities. It can be tempting to view this as a factor that can be easily analyzed in several ways. For instance, an individual can decide on disjunctively representing the meaning of words like “club” and “crane” or may choose to individuate them as several lexical items that look and sound the same, perhaps through using subscripts. The problem, however, is that disjunctively represented meanings do not uniquely explain ambiguity, and using subscripts just covers the issue of what those subscripts denote. The problem is more than just a trivial choice or a nuisance and can have severe consequences on how conditional semantics can be pursued.

II LITERATURE REVIEW ABOUT THE AMBIGUITY AND ESPECIALLY ON THE AMBIGUITY OF THE PRONOUNS

According to Jha [8], ambiguity, has, over the decades, been a basis of amusement, confusion, and frustration for poets, linguists, theorists, authors, speakers, writers, lexicographers, and any other professional concerned with the interpretation of linguistic signs. The interest of philosophers in the concept emanates from concerns based on natural language regulation in formal reasoning. Opinions, which may appear good in regard to their linguistic form, can appear wrong if the phrases or words used are ambiguous. It is essential to understand ambiguity and study how it relates and varies from similar notions like indexicality vagueness, and polysemy.

Sometimes, ambiguity may rely on the context, meaning a word or an object can be unambiguous in a certain situation and ambiguous in another. For instance, if one considers a short phrase like “Ellah read the letter.” The phrase alone could either refer to a past or present action as the word “read” is pronounced the same way both in the past and present tenses. Yet, if the sentence is changed to “Ellah read the letter last year,” then that clears the ambiguity in the sentence and places the time of the action in the past tense.

Ambiguity in grammar is experienced on a day-to-day basis, whether in conversations or ordinary language or when watching news or comedies [10]. Below are some examples of ambiguous sentences, which have more than two meanings or interpretations. Often, sentences are written in a way that they end up having pronouns that could have more than one different antecedent.

An example of an ambiguous sentence is, “Sarah asked Lucy if she had seen her brother.” In this example, the pronoun “her” does not clearly tell whether it was Lucy’s or Sarah’s brother. The ambiguity in the sentence would be resolved if it was written in such a way that Sarah specifies whether it was her brother or Lucy’s brother she was looking for. 

Another ambiguous sentence is, “Leah and Olivia visited the mall after she cleaned her room.” The problem with this sentence is that it has many antecedents, and it is not clear which one matches a specific pronoun. It is ambiguous if “she” refers to Leah or Olivia. To resolve the ambiguity in this sentence and make it clear who “she” refers to, one should replace the pronoun “she’ with the lady’s name being referred to. The sentence could be reworded to read “Leahand Olivia visited the mall after Olivia cleaned her room.”

Note the following example of how the unclear use of pronouns might refer to two or more antecedents, leaving readers unsure of the meaning that the writer intended to pass. “Sarah told her aunt that her skirt had a stain in it.” In this sentence, it is not clear whether it is Sarah’s skirt that is stained or her aunt’s. The sentence might get a reader confused. According to Ezzati and Farahian [11], the rule of thumb states that the pronoun should refer to the closest antecedent, which in the above sentence is the word “aunt.” Suppose the writer meant that Sarah’s skirt is stained, then one might consider rewriting the sentence. If revised, the sentence should read; Sarah told her aunt, “My skirt has a stain on it.” Or, in case the writer means the opposite, then the sentence can be rewritten to read; Sarah told her aunt, “Your skirt has a stain on it.”

Another sentence would be, “Leah did not believe that she had been selected class captain by her roommates who lacked much self-confidence.” The sentence is ambiguous as it leaves the reader questioning whether Leah was shocked that her roommates all chose her as class captain because she herself lacked self-confidence or whether Leah was amazed that her roommates chose her as a class captain, although they lack much self-confidence. The resolution, in this case, is that such types of pronouns refer to the closest pronoun or noun. A way in which the problem can be solved is to move the “who” clause closer to its modifier. The sentence can be rewritten in this manner; “Leah, who lacked much self-confidence, did not believe that she had been selected as a class captain by her roommates.” Or if the writer wants to create an emphasis that the roommates are the ones that lack self-confidence, then the sentence could be written as follows, “Leah did not believe she had been selected as class captain by her roommates since they lacked much self-confidence.”

Although sometimes the pattern used to write a sentence is the same, the purposes that the sentence constituents perform are not the same. An example of an ambiguous sentence that belongs in this category is “they served her the cat biscuits.” The sentence can be reworded in two ways “Her cat was served the biscuits” or “She was served the cat biscuits.” The ambiguity in the sentence can be explained in this manner. In the first sentence, the pronoun “her” is considered a constituent that is carrying out the indirect object’s function, while the cat’s biscuits, which is the noun phrase is performing the function of the direct object. 

Other than the suggested solution given in each case or sentence scenario, there is a specific way proposed by linguists in which ambiguity in sentences can be resolved [18]. Linguists recommend on the use of diagrams known as trees, which effortlessly embody word groupings with sentences. An example is shown in figure 1:

Fig. 1. Tree diagram

To understand what was stated in the sentence the pronoun should refer to the closest antecedent, it is clear from the tree that “these” is the pronoun that closely relates to the dogs, while “those” relates closely to the cats. The abbreviations in the above tree stand for the different groups or types of words. “S” stands for sentence, “NP” for noun phrase “VP” for verb phrase, “P” for pronoun or preposition, “V” for the verb and “N” for a noun, .

In ambiguity, linguistic units such as sentences, phrases, lexical units, or clauses can have two different meanings or can serve more than one function. The possibility of ambiguity in syntactic and linguistic units happens as a result of the basis that the number of ideas that the two units should cover are high. Lexical units should have more than one meaning for them to carry out the syntactic roles in a limitless number of sentences. This is the same for clauses and phrases.

In as much as ambiguity in grammar writing is concerned, two alternatives exist and should be used to deal with ambiguity. The first one is to write a sentence in a way that limits the capacity of its interpretations to only one meaning. The second one is to write a sentence in a way that can have more than one meaning, but a reader can understand it based on the context. Note that the second option offers an ambiguous solution. However, it must fulfill two conditions: syntactic and semantic. An example of a sentence is “she touched the boy with cold arms.” The semantic content of the PP “with cold arms” refers to both the NP “the boy” and the V for verb, “touched.” The same prepositional phrase PP is both a modifier for the NP “the boy” and the verb “touched.” In trying to understand syntactic ambiguity in sentences, MacGregor et al. [20] explain that while ambiguity is a natural and a normal phenomenon, it is seen as an uncertainty, an enemy, or a grammatical disorder that can lead to more harm than good.

A. Ambiguity in Pronouns

A pronoun is defined as a word that is used in place of a noun. Pronouns are used in grammatical writing to avoid the repetition of the same nouns in a sentence. The common types of pronouns as aforementioned are I, we, us, me, he, she, mine, and us. However, there are several types of pronouns, which are subjective, objective, reflexive, intensive, relative, indefinite, interrogative, demonstrative, and possessive pronouns.

Subjective pronouns are words that perform the action of a verb. These pronouns include I, we, they, you, she, he, and it [12]. Objective pronouns, as defined by Yao [12] receive the verb’s action. They include us, them, him, her, me, you, and it.

Another group of pronouns are demonstrative pronouns, which point out nouns. These include those, that, this, and these.  The fourth group is possessive pronouns that tell the owner of an item or object. They include yours, ours, his, hers, its, mine, and theirs. The fifth type is interrogative pronouns that are used to question about something. These pronouns are whom, who, which, and composite words ending with “ever” like whomever, whoever, whichever, and whatever. Indefinite pronoun is another group, which represent a general thing or a person. Examples of these pronouns are few, both, all, many, somebody, nothing, everyone, some, neither, any, none, each, and several. The other group of pronouns is relative pronouns, which are words used in a sentence to introduce a clause that describes a noun [12]. They include whom, who, which, and that. Intensive pronouns are another type that emphasizes their antecedent. They are yourselves, himself, herself, themselves, itself, ourselves, and myself.  Reflexive pronouns are the last type which refers back to a sentence subject. They include ourselves, himself, herself, itself, yourselves, themselves, and myself. 

Readers experience many pronoun errors in writing. Some of these common errors and which show ambiguity in the sentences include the use of pronouns without an antecedent [13]. An example of a sentence that lacks an antecedent is, “Even though Leila is very rich, she does not make good use of it.” There is ambiguity in the sentence as the antecedent is missing, which, in this case, is “wealth.” The second mistake is noted in the use of pronouns is matching the words to their antecedent in number, gender, and person [13]. An example of such a sentence is “pick the unused pieces, and save it for the next student.” The ambiguity in the sentence is seen where the antecedent “it” is used to refer to the “unused pieces,” which is plural. The last error is noted in the use of objective or nominative pronoun cases while using a possessive antecedent.  An example of this error in a sentence is “the attorney called the client’s office, but he failed to answer.” The ambiguity, in this case, is seen where “he” is referring to the client, but has been used only in the possessive case.

In other cases, a sentence can be written in a way that they end up with pronouns that have more than two antecedents [19]. It is crucial for a writer to revise their writing to revise such ambiguous cases. An example of an unclear sentence is, “Linda told Lillian that her classmate is stubborn.” In this sentence, it is not easy to tell whether it is Linda’s or Lillian’s classmate being talked about. Linda could be telling Lillian that Linda’s classmate is stubborn, or she could be telling Lillian that her classmate is stubborn. The sentence can be rewritten to do away with the ambiguity. It would read, Linda told Lillian, “Your classmate is stubborn.”

Another case where the use of pronouns can be ambiguous is when there are introductory aspects in a sentence. An example of such a sentence is, “ When I hit my leg on the glass window, I broke it.” In this case, it is impossible to tell whether it is the leg or the window that broke. A revised version would be, “I broke my leg when I hit into the glass window.”

Writers should, however, note that the rules that govern the ambiguity in pronouns are lenient compared to the guidelines. Ambiguity in pronouns should be the last verdict when deciding to reject an option. This means that it should be revised after other elements such as tense, subject-verb agreements, modifiers, and parallelism have been reviewed. According to King et al. [14], one should understand that not every sentence containing two nouns before a pronoun falls under ambiguity errors in the use of pronouns. Suppose there is a pronoun agreement with those two nouns in gender and number, whereby the nouns are antecedents of the pronoun, then there may be ambiguity. However, in some cases, logic plays the role in deciding the noun that should perform the action.

B. Pronoun Ambiguity in Semantics with Examples

Pronouns are among the sources of ambiguity in sentences. This means that a pronoun’s antecedent is not easily determined by the use of semantic information only, but by a combination of contextual, semantic, and syntactic information [9]. Pronouns consist of mostly one-word terms, whose semantic contents are limited to basic factors like people, gender, or numbers. Usually, such factors do not contribute to the at-issue or assertive utterance content. In several cases, the given factors in bound pronoun semantics may be ignored. For example, “Only I brought my fruits”- in bound reading, the sentence would read: no other person other than me brought the fruits. In this sentence, the features (number, gender, and person) have been ignored. In the sentence, the variable “my” is not limited to the speaker.

Pronoun ambiguity in semantics occurs when a sentence, phrase, or word that is taken out of context is interpreted in more than one manner. An example in a sentence is “We saw her cartwheel,” the words “her cartwheel” can be interpreted to mean either i) the individual’s cartwheel (the noun “cartwheel” is modified by “her” which is the possessive pronoun or ii) to a movement the person made (the verb “cartwheel,” the objective pronoun here is “her,” which an object “saw” the verb in the sentence.

Another sentence example is “I saw Theresa and Karen sitting in the gazebo; she was watching the stars.” In this sentence, the pronoun “she” is ambiguous because its identity is not clearly defined, given both the antecedents “Theresa” and “Karen” are possible subjects of co-reference. In this case, there are two possibilities in the way a reader can opt to resolve the issue of semantic ambiguity in the pronoun. One, maybe one single antecedent, is directly acknowledged as a coreferent, irrespective of the linguistic challenges [15]. For example, an individual could immediately assign the pronoun “she” to “Theresa” because she is the first antecedent. Another alternative would be for both “Theresa” and “Karen” to be activated equally, and the selection of the candidate to be assigned the pronoun to wait until a later stage, where there will be more contextual evidence.

The previous perspective accentuates an instant processing of the pronoun based on the readily available semantic cues [16]. In the given sentence, the prompt is the order in which the antecedents appear. The latter outlook considers the role that delayed contextual factors play in determining where the pronoun will be placed.

Semantic ambiguity in pronouns could also occur when a sentence has two or more distinct meanings as a result of its structure. This is caused by a modifying expression like a prepositional statement whose application is ambiguous [9]. An example of a sentence is, “she sipped the juice on the bed.” One of the meanings is “ she sipped the juice that was on the bed,” as opposed to the one that was in the kitchen. Another meaning is, she was on the bed while she sipped the juice.

Steinach [17] suggests that a way in which interpretations about pronoun ambiguity in semantics can be understood would be to isolate the antecedents for a no or yes recognition after the sentence is read. Differential accuracy or speed acknowledgment should reveal different activation levels based on those antecedents and how they are related to the pronoun. The coreferent identified by the reader is closely linked to the pronoun, and therefore, reading it would mean a reactivation of its representation [16]. Such action allows recognition as evaluated by both accuracy and speed, particularly when the coreferent is presented later as a probe, compared to an antecedent that is not identified. An example of a sentence to explain this ambiguity is “Rose and Joy went to the market” with “Rose” being the most critical name, as it would recur as the test probe. Recognizing the critical name, in this case, “Rose” after reading the entire statement is faster when the second clause contains a gender-appropriate pronoun ( that is, the critical pronoun); for instance, “ …and she bought a yellow dress.” Reading the non-critical name is slower in this case. To better understand the ambiguity in pronouns, it is important to note that such a facilitatory impact is specific to the identification of the first or critical name analysis. Therefore, noting the idea that the understanding of the pronoun reboots only the semantic illustration of its distinctive coreferent [18]. The use of this method demonstrates that the processing of ambiguous pronouns in semantics does not lead to instant understanding of specific coreferents, hence resolving the issue of ambiguity can be delayed for later contextual cues.

III CONCLUSION

Pronouns are important words that help in simplifying sentences by avoiding repetition and using shorter words. However, the failure to pair pronouns with their antecedents can lead to ambiguity in analytical writing. This does not mean that they should not be used in sentences or writing but implies that one should be able to recognize and fix any pronouns, which show ambiguity. Phrases, sentences, and words become unclear when they represent more than one meaning. From the discussion, it is evident that ambiguity is a complex issue, which, if not resolved, can create a misunderstanding. In understanding ambiguity in sentences, semantics, as well as the syntax, play a similar role. The two are also useful in helping disambiguate unclear phrases, sentences, or statements. The paper aimed at understanding the concept of ambiguity and how it occurs in pronouns. The document outlined the ways in which ambiguity in pronouns and grammatical writing can be resolved. This was done by giving examples of ambiguous sentences and how each can be rewritten or reworded to avoid ambiguity. Conclusively, ambiguity is a vital feature of language, which is found in words, sentences, and phrases, especially in cases where there is more than one represented meaning.

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