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AMBIGUITY, SENTENCE AND UTTERANCE: A REPRESENTATIONAL APPROACH 1
Author(s) -
BURTONROBERTS NOEL
Publication year - 1994
Publication title -
transactions of the philological society
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 0.333
H-Index - 26
eISSN - 1467-968X
pISSN - 0079-1636
DOI - 10.1111/j.1467-968x.1994.tb00431.x
Subject(s) - utterance , ambiguity , relation (database) , linguistics , sentence , phenomenon , computer science , philosophy , epistemology , database
While some, more or less radical, distinction between language and linguistic behaviour (between language and speech, language and communication, sentence and utterance) is universally assumed, the nature of the relation between them is less often addressed or characterised in a manner satisfactory in itself or consistent with the distinctions we wish to make. The more radical the distinction, the more urgent the question of their relation becomes. The paper sketches some of the problems and outlines a proposal. This takes the form of a Representational Hypothesis about the relation, designed to be consistent with (and render defensible) a very radical distinction between language and such behaviour. The discussion focuses on ambiguity both for itself and for illustrative purposes. It is suggested that ambiguity is not a linguistically semantic phenomenon and indeed not linguistic.