Blog 6

The advantage of ambiguity

Many questions come to linguists minds when thinking about language and one of the most pressing ones is why did language evolve. It has been thought that language was not developed to communicate because of how inefficient it is with its ambiguity but some researchers say that because of that, it is more efficient making it allowed to use short simple sounds over and over again. Some people even say that one can use the ambiguous nature of language to and certain degree of advantage. Even with ambiguous words, people learn to listen and understand what it means out of context almost automatically. Researchers have found that words that have few syllables, are used frequently and are easier to pronounce should have the most meanings. The reason ambiguity is more efficient is that when a speaker is talking, they want to get the most meaning out with not as many words whereas the listener wants to get a a full understanding of what the person is explaining. Instead of going over long more convoluted explanations, it's easier to have the listener infer some things using ambiguous language. 

I found this article refreshing because I think it is looked down upon to have ambiguity in language but it was never really questioned because it seems right that ambiguity wouldn't be as efficient. In actuality it is more efficient in a certain respect and it really opens up a new way of thinking about language and the natural progression of language. In this article it even said that the changing of languages was studied and one would think that the ambiguity would be cut out but it increased when the language naturally progressed.