LANGUAGE IN INDIA

Strength for Today and Bright Hope for Tomorrow

Volume 15:7 July 2015
ISSN 1930-2940

Managing Editor: M. S. Thirumalai, Ph.D.
Editors: B. Mallikarjun, Ph.D.
         Sam Mohanlal, Ph.D.
         B. A. Sharada, Ph.D.
         A. R. Fatihi, Ph.D.
         Lakhan Gusain, Ph.D.
         Jennifer Marie Bayer, Ph.D.
         S. M. Ravichandran, Ph.D.
         G. Baskaran, Ph.D.
         L. Ramamoorthy, Ph.D.
         C. Subburaman, Ph.D. (Economics)
         N. Nadaraja Pillai, Ph.D.
Assistant Managing Editor: Swarna Thirumalai, M.A.

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Intervening with Interjections:
A Comprehensive Approach to Study Ambiguity in
Natural Conversations

Rolla Das, M.A. Ph.D. Candidate
Rajesh Kasturirangan, Ph.D.
Anindya Sinha, Ph.D.

Abstract

Ambiguity during communication, in which a linguistic or gestural sign has multiple meanings, is often considered to be a deterrent to successful communicative interactions. The resolution of ambiguity, therefore, has been a concern in linguistics and in communication studies. This paper critiques certain prevalent experimental paradigms, which have been the most popular approaches to investigate ambiguity resolution, and proposes an alternative methodology to understand and address this phenomenon.

Keywords: Experimental studies in ambiguity, language, pragmatics, semantics, gestures, interjections

1. Introduction

Ambiguity, a phenomenon pervasive in all languages, results when signs, linguistic or otherwise, have multiple meanings or interpretations. Within linguistics, ambiguity has been considered a property of language, wherein a single linguistic form could imply more than one meaning. The meanings, however, could sometimes be semantically related (Wang 2011). For example, compare the words see and bank. See could mean perceiving something, noticing or becoming aware of a person or object—primarily by using one’s eyes, having the ability to see, forming a mental picture of something, visualising an event, understanding something, supposing, or recognising an event or action. While seeing a bird fly across and seeing the point of an argument are different from one another, the two meanings are, nevertheless, semantically related. This is different from the word bank, where the sense of it being a financial institution or referring to the riverside are not semantically related; similar is the word bark, which could refer to both a dog’s call or the outer layer of a tree’s trunk, where the sense of ‘call’ and ‘outer layer’ are not related. Etymological, morphological and semantic analyses, taking into note, metaphoric and metonymic extensions of the words and the senses, and syntactic parsing are some of the ways to distinguish between homonyms and polysemous words (See Rajendran 2014 for an exposition of how related and unrelated pairs of words are distinguished).

This is only the beginning part of the article. PLEASE CLICK HERE TO READ THE ENTIRE ARTICLE IN PRINTER-FRIENDLY VERSION.

Rolla Das, M.A. Ph.D. Candidate (Corresponding Author)
National Institute of Advanced Studies
Indian Institute of Science Campus
Bangalore 560012
Karnataka
India
rolladas@gmail.com

Rajesh Kasturirangan, Ph.D.
National Institute of Advanced Studies
Indian Institute of Science Campus
Bangalore 560012
Karnataka
India
rkasturi@gmail.com

Anindya Sinha, Ph.D.
National Institute of Advanced Studies
Indian Institute of Science Campus
Bangalore 560012
Karnataka
India
anindya.rana.sinha@gmail.com

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