The Perception of Ambiguity by English L2 Speakers

This book explores the perception and disambiguation of ambiguous English sentences by English L2 speakers.It endeavours to establish the role played by gender in the perception of ambiguity. It also finds out which of the types of ambiguity (lexical and structural ambiguity) is easier to perceive. The data used is collected from NUL studebts in the second, third and fourth years of study. These students were selected from Law, Nursing,Pastoral Care and Counselling, English and Political Science programmes.The structure is considered perceived if it occurs 90% of the times. It is found out that students fail to perceive and disambiguate sentences. It is discovered that gender is not a significant variable.Moreover, students' perception of structural ambiguity is found to be better than their perception of lexical ambiguity.