AMBIGUITY
The words ambiguity (N), ambiguous (Adj) come from the Latin verb ambigere, “to discuss, to be in controversy”: qui ambigunt ‘those engaged in a discussion’ (Cic. Fin. 2,4)” (Gaffiot, Ambigo). To refer to the issue, to the point on which the partners disagree, Cicero uses the expression “illud ipsum de quo ambiguebatur”, “precisely that – on which – [they] disagree” (ibid.).
Ambiguitas means « doubt »; the answers given by the Oracles were ambiguous in this sense.
The word amphiboly is sometimes used in discussing the Aristotelian fallacy of ambiguity. It adapts a Greek word [amphibology] composed of amphi- « on both sides”; bolos “throwing on all sides”; logos, « word”, and means “having a double meaning, ambiguous. Literally, an amphiboly is an “explosion of meaning”.
The word ambiguity can be used to refer to three fallacies “dependent on language”, homonymy, amphiboly, and accent. These fallacies are defined as violations of the rule of syllogism or of dialectical reasoning, which requires that language be unambiguous, see Dialectic; Fallacies (2): Aristotle basic list.
Problems of ambiguity arise at the level of words (homonymy, accent), at the level of sentences (syntactic ambiguity), or at the level of discourse. Such problems are combined with the fact that non-ambiguous sentences may have multiple layers of meaning, see Presupposition; Words as Arguments.
1. Syntactic ambiguity
Sentence ambiguity, discussed by Aristotle from the perspective of a grammar of argumentation, is now seen as a syntactic problem. The famous Chomskyan ambiguous statement “flying airplanes can be dangerous” can be paraphrased as:
Under some circumstances, flying airplanes is a dangerous activity
Airlanes are dangerous when they fly.
These paraphrases are not equivalent. The no less famous statement “The teacher says the principal is an ass” is syntactically ambiguous, it allows for two syntactic structures whose difference is marked by intonation or punctuation:
“The teacher,” says the principal, “is a donkey”
The teacher says: “The principal is a donkey”.
Ambiguity is sometimes an artifact of decontextualization, produced for the sake of grammatical or logical theory. In practice, the addition of a sufficient amount of left and right context is sufficient to clarify the intended meaning, as shown by the re-contextualization of the sentence “We saw her duck” (Wikipedia, Ambiguity), which is four times ambiguous when decontextualized:
We saw her duck swimming in the pool
We saw her duck picking up something on the floor
We do not have a knife, so we saw her duck
She is a clever bridge player, so we saw her duck
Serious ambiguity occurs when the context does not disambiguate the sentence. The reduction of ambiguity to univocity is no less important for the interpretation of texts, sacred and otherwise, than it is for logic. In De Doctrina Christiana, St Augustine gives a rule to be applied when trying to interpret religious texts:
But when proper words make Scripture ambiguous, we must see in the first place that there is nothing wrong in our punctuation or pronunciation. Accordingly, if, when attention is given to the passage, it shall appear to be uncertain in what way it ought to be punctuated or pronounced, let the reader consult the rule of faith which he has gathered from the plainer passages of Scripture, and from the authority of the Church.
Augustine, [397] On Christian Doctrine, in Four Books, (our emphasis)[1]
The rule of interpretation in the highlighted passage appeals to the consistency of the field of theological argument. It applies to the interpretation of the first verse of the first chapter of the Gospel of John, the Genesis. Nothing less than the very concept of God is at stake. It must be shown that the correct “punctuation”, that is the correct reading of this verse, is consistent with the orthodox conception of the Trinity, which affirms the divine identity and equality of the Father, the Son and the Holy Spirit. The reading that ascribes a syntax of coordination to the utterance results in the denial the identity of the Word, that is the Holy Spirit, with God; it must therefore be considered heretical and rejected as such.
3. Now look at some examples. The heretical pointing, « In principio erat verbum, et verbum erat apud Deum, et Deus erat » (In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with
God, and God was), so as to make the next sentence run, « Verbum hoc erat in principio apud Deum » (This word was in the beginning with God), arises out of unwillingness to confess that the Word was God. But this must be rejected by the rule of faith, which, in reference to the equality of the Trinity, directs us to say: « et Deus erat verbum » (and the Word was God); and then to add: « hoc erat in principio apud Deum » (the same was in the beginning with God). (Id., Chap. II, 3)
The disputed passage is a sentence taken from the Sacred Text: « et verbum erat apud Deum et Deus erat » (« the Word was with God1 and God was »). I can’t and don’t want to touch the theological discussion. I risk the following bracketing, and leave the last word to the wise.
Orthodox bracketing – For Augustine, the orthodox punctuation and construction of the verse is: « In principio erat verbum, et Verbum erat apud Deum, et Deus erat Verbum. »
(Biblia Sacra…Parisiis, Letouzey et Ané, 1887).
{The Word [was with God] and [was God]}
The argument is not grammatical, but drawn, as indicated above, « from the plainer passages of Scripture, and from the authority of the Church.”
Heretical bracketing:
{[the Word was with God] and [was God]}
Disambiguation is the foundational operation for the vast and important domain of interpretive argumentation.
2. Word ambiguity: homonymy, polysemy
Two words are homonymous when they have the same signifier (the same spelling (homographs), the same pronunciation (homophones) or both), but completely different meanings. Homonymous words are listed as separate entries in the dictionary:
Mine: “that which belongs to me.” (MW, Mine)
Mine: “a pit or excavation in the earth from which mineral substances are taken” (ibid.).
Polysemous words are semantic particularizations or acceptances of the same signifier within the same grammatical category. In the dictionary, they are listed under the same entry, and correspond to the first subdivision of meaning:
Mine, noun
1 a: a pit or excavation in the earth from which mineral substances are taken. b: an ore deposit.
2: a subterranean passage under an enemy position.
3: an encased explosive that is placed in the ground or in water and set to explode when disturbed.
4: a rich source of supply (id.)
When two different series of derived words come from the same root word, that word is in the process of splitting into two homonyms. This is the case of the three series derived from the word argument, see To Argue, Argument.
2.1 Paralogism and Sophism of Homonymy
A syllogism is fallacious by homonymy when it articulates not three but four terms, one of which is taken in two different senses, see Paralogism.
In the Euthydemus, Plato provides an example of sophisticated practice using a very special kind of homonymy. The sophist Euthydemus, the eponymous character of this dialogue, asks Clinias, “Who are the men who learn, the wise or the ignorant? » (Euth., 275d; p. 712). Poor Clinias blushes and replies that “the wise are the learners”; and six turns of speech later, he must agree that « it is the ignorant who learn » (Euth., 276a – b; p. 713). The young Clinias is quite stunned, and Euthydemus’ followers “broke into applause and laughter” (ibid.). Such sophisms are not intended to deceive their victims, but to destabilize their naive certainties about the language. Through this salutary shock, the public becomes aware of the opacity and the proper form of language, S. Persuasion; Sophism. As Socrates later explains, “the same word is applied to opposite sorts of men, to both the man who knows and to the man who does not” (id., 278a, p. 715).
In general, the subject and object of a verb are not interchangeable; the situation in which “A loves B” is different from the situation in which “B loves A”. To learn, to be the host of, to rent are examples of this property:
to rent 1. pay someone for the use of (something, typically property, land, or a car). 2. (of an owner) allow someone to use (something) in return for payment. (MW, Rent)
2.2 Homonyms and Polysemy
The polysemy of words is considered a major source of confusion. Scientific language prohibits both polysemy and homonymy, and requires the use of unambiguous, well-defined terms stabilized in their meaning and syntax, in a given scientific field. Homonymy between a scientific term and a common word is harmless. In physics, the use of the word charm to refer to a particle, the charm quark creates no ambiguity.
In a natural language argument, the meaning of terms is constructed and recomposed in the course of the discourse, see Object of discourse. The meaning of a word used by the same speaker may change from one stage of the argument to the next. This results from a variety of mechanisms, such as the use of homonymous or closely similar words, or the use of a word in both its literal and figurative senses in the same discourse. For example, when discussing the credit to be given to a person, there may be a, subtle shift between « determining the amount of a loan » and « trusting » that person. In German, the economic discussion of financial debt seems to remain linked to the discussion of moral guilt, the same signifier, Schuld, has these two meanings. (Reverso, Schuld).
Homonymy and polysemy can be readjusted by the operation of distinguo.
3. “Accent”: stress and paronomasia
In a language where word stress is linguistically relevant, shifting the stress from one syllable to another can change the meaning of the word, for example in Spanish (my underlining):
Hacía: stress on the second syllable, 1st pers. sing of the verb hacer, « I did”.
Hacia: stress on the first syllable, means “to, towards”, preposition.
The words seem to be the same, except for the accent (oral and written), but they are actually two different words. Much like the fallacy of homonymy which shifts the meaning of a single signifier, the fallacy of accent also shifts the meaning of the word through a minimal but crucial suprasegmental change. This process occurs as though the difference between the signifiers is not considered salient enough to distinguish between the variations in meaning.
This is a special case of paronomasia (or annominatio), defined as a:
(pseudo-) etymological play on the slightness of the phonetic change on the one hand and the interesting range of meaning which is created by means of the change on the other. In such cases, the range of meaning can be raised to the level of paradox. (Lausberg [1960], §637)
Generally speaking, paronomasia creates a meaning-generating cell, by contrasting or assimilating a word (signifier) W0 with a minimally different word (signifier) W1.
In the dialog, the paronomastic resumption of a term functions as a rectification, breaking the orientation of this discourse, S. Orientation Reversal, “this is not a crisis of conscience, this is a crisis of confidence”.
[1] Book III, Ch. 2, 2. No pag. Quoted from https://www.ccel.org/ccel/augustine/doctrine.txt . (11-08-2017)