Реферат: Problem of meaning ambiguity in a language
Eagerly her eyes searched the darkness. The roof seemed to be intact. Could it be — could it be — ? No, it wasn't possible. War stopped for no-thing, not even Tara, built to last five hundred years. It could not have passed over Tara. Then the shadowy outline did take form. The white walls did show there through the darkness. Tara had escaped. Home! (Mitchell)
But Swithin, hearing the name Irene, looked severely at Euphemia, who, it is true, never did look well in a dress, whatever she may have done on other occasions. (Galsworthy)
Strong emphasis is also produced by using pleonastic patterns with segmentations, e. g.: He never did care for the river, did Montmorency. (Jerome)
As we have already said, there are no absolute synonyms in grammar. Synonymic forms will generally differ either in various shades of the common grammatical meaning, expressive connotation or in stylistic value. The former may be referred to as relative synonyms, the latter as stylistic ones.
Further examples of paradigmatic synonyms will be found among the so-called periphrastic forms of the English verb.
Relatively synonymous are, for instance, the Future Indefinite tense-forms and the periphrastic " to be going to" future. A simple affirmative statement of intention with no external circumstances mentioned (time, condition, reason, etc.) is generally expressed by the periphrastic form. When a future action depends on the external circumstances the "to be going to" is rare. Cf.:
1. a) He will sell his house, (rare)
b) He's going to sell his house. (normal)
2. a) He'll sell it if you ask him. (normal)
b) He is going to sell it if you ask him. (rare) 1
To be going to with a personal subject implies a much stronger intention than the Future Tense with shall/will does.
Patterns with the passive auxiliaries be and get will also illustrate grammatical synonyms of the first type.
The passive forms in Modern English are represented by analytic combinations of the auxiliary verb to be with the past participle of the conjugated verb. The verb to get can also function as an auxiliary of the passive, e. g.: (1) My dress got caught on a nail. (2) He got struck by a stone. t hese are not new usages, but ones which are spreading.
To get seems closer to the true passive auxiliary be in patterns like the following: She got blamed for everything. She gets teased by the other children.
The stabilisation of lexico-grammatical devices to indicate the aspective character of the action has also contributed to the development of synonymy in Modern English.
A special interest attaches to contextual synonyms on the grammatica1 level created through transposition of related grammatical forms, Neutralisation of the distinctive features of the opposed grammatical forms leads to situational synonymy. Here are a few examples to illustrate the statement:
(1) Are you coming to the PPRS Board on Tuesday? (Galsworthy) (The Supposition Present — Future is neutralised; Are you coming? is synonymus with Will you come?)
Similarly:
(2) Whom do you think I travelled with? Fleur Mont. We ran up against each other at Victoria. She's taking her boy to boring next week to convalesce him. (Galsworthy) (She's taking = she will take)
A special interest attaches to contextual synonyms on the grammatica1 level created through transposition of related grammatical forms, Neutralisation of the distinctive features of the opposed grammatical forms leads to situational synonymy. Here are a few examples to illustrate the statement:
(1) Are you coming to the PPRS Board on Tuesday? (Galsworthy) (The Supposition Present — Future is neutralised; Are you coming? is synonymus with Will you come?)
Similarly:
(2) Whom do you think I travelled with? Fleur Mont. We ran up against each other at Victoria. She's taking her boy to boring next week to convalesce him. (Galsworthy) (She's taking = she will take)
Present Continuous and Present Indefinite may function as situational synonyms in cases like the following:
(3)Dicky! said James. You are always wasting money on something. (Galsworthy) (You are always wasting is synonymous with You always waste) .
(4)She is continually imagining dangers when they do not exist. (She is imagining = she imagines).
(5)June read: Lake Okanagen. British Columbia, I'm not coming back to England. Bless you always. — John. (Galsworthy) (I'm not coming = = I shall not come) .
(6)Fleur huddled her chin in her fur. It was easterly and cold. A voice behind her said: Well, Fleur, am I going East? (Galsworthy) Cf. Am I going East? = Shall I go East?
Conclusion
In this essay we have tried to prove that although ideational content is certainly an important aspect of linguistic communication, it is a mistake to regard clarity of referential meaning as a master skill, in two ways. First it is an error to assume that all other words serve at the pleasure of communicating speaker’s intended semantic reference; and second, it is an error to assume that all meaningful linguistic action has clarity of referential meaning as its central goal, or that only messages with clear referential content are in some sense communicative. Polysemy, ambiguity, synonymy often helps achieve a communicational goal.