Analysis of Chinese Language Ambiguity in Teaching Activities From a Semantic Perspective

(Department of Linguistics, Universitas Pendidikan Indonesia, Indonesia)

Abstract: Linguists generally agree that ambiguity is when the meaning of a sentence is ambiguous and can be interpreted in two or more ways. Ambiguity is a universal linguistic phenomenon that exists in all natural languages. Ambiguity not only affects the language communication between people, but also has a negative transfer effect on language learners. The learner will have some misunderstanding of the grammatical system and conversational meaning of the target language, which will lead to the wrong use of the learner target language. Therefore, understanding the causes of ambiguity will have a significant impact on second language acquisition teaching activities. This paper attempts to make a comparative analysis of Chinese ambiguity from the perspective of semantics. Combined with the typical cases of the author’s past teaching practice activities, taking Chinese as an example, there may be ambiguities in phonetics, semantics or grammar. Through these perspectives, various factors that lead to ambiguity are analyzed, the influence of ambiguity in practical language applications is demonstrated, and several effective methods for disambiguation are expected to be proposed.

Key words: mandarin, ambiguity, semantics, teaching activities, acquisition language