摘要

任何自然语言中都有歧义现象存在，“歧义现象是任何一种自然语言都无法避免的一种普遍现象”。英语歧义多年来一直是不少学者热衷于探讨的话题，他们有的从结构构成去分析歧义的现象，有的从歧义的积极作用和消极作用着手，本文通过从语音，词汇，语法及语用功能四方面入手着重分析英语歧义的现象和其产生的原因，从而对英语歧义有更好的，更系统的认识，并在以后学习中，工作上，乃至日常生活中能够巧妙的运用英语歧义。
从语音方面分析，引起歧义的主要因素是语调、同音、重音和连读；从词汇方面分析，引起歧义的主要因素为一词多义和同音异义词；从语法方面分析，歧义主要存在于比较状语从句，含有否定词或代词的句子等；从语用方面分析,歧义主要表现为在不同场合下同一句子会有不同意思。

关键词：歧义现象；  歧义成因；  语音歧义；  词汇歧义；  语法歧义；  语用歧义 

Abstract

Ambiguity exists in any natural language, which means that “the ambiguity is a kind of phenomenon that can’t be avoided in any natural languages.” Many scholars have researched on the subject of ambiguity for many years. Some of them analyze its constitution of structure, and others analyze it from the positive and negative effects of the ambiguity. This thesis makes a research on the phenomenon and causes of ambiguity from four aspects: phonological ambiguity, lexical ambiguity, grammatical ambiguity and pragmatic ambiguity, which will make people have a better and more systematic understanding, and use the ambiguity ingeniously in the study, work and even the daily life.
As far as phonological is concerned, this paper mainly discussed on the causes of intonation, homophony, stress and liaison; as far as lexical concerned, this paper main discussed on the causes of Polysemy and homonymy; as far as grammar concerned, we can find that the ambiguity usually exists in comparative adverbial clauses and the sentences which have the negative words or and pronoun; as far as pragmatics concerned, the ambiguity always means that a sentence will have two or more different means in different situations.

Keywords: phenomenon of ambiguity；cause of ambiguity；Phonological ambiguity；lexical ambiguity；grammatical ambiguity；pragmatic ambiguity