Investigating Iraqi EFL University Students’ Ability to Interpret Ambiguity in Elliptical Constructions
Article Sidebar
Main Article Content
Abstract
Ambiguity is a linguistic phenomenon that often arises from grammatical structures such as comparative elliptical constructions, which can create difficulties for students of English as a foreign language. This study aims to identify and compare Iraqi EFL university students’ ability to interpret ambiguity arising from comparative elliptical constructions, as well as their ability to interpret ambiguity at both the recognition and the production levels. The study sample comprises 202 fourth-stage Iraqi EFL university students from Departments of English at the Colleges of Education for Humanities at Tikrit and Al-Hamdaniya Universities during the academic year 2025–2026. The present study adopts a descriptive quantitative research design and uses a diagnostic test to collect data. The findings reveal that Iraqi EFL university students have a low ability to interpret ambiguity arising from comparative elliptical constructions, and students perform better in recognition tasks than in production tasks, which means that identifying ambiguous constructions is easier than producing possible interpretations for them.
Article Details
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License.
References
Alderson, C. (1995) Dictionary of Language Testing. London: Cambridge University Press.
Bacskai-Atkari, J. (2018). Deletion phenomena in comparative constructions: English comparatives in a cross-linguistic perspective (Open Generative Syntax, Vol. 3). Language Science Press.
Bevis, A. J. (2018). A comparative study of selected ellipsis constructions in English and isiZulu (Master’s thesis, University of KwaZulu-Natal, Howard College, South Africa).
Bhardwaj, P. (2019). Types of sampling in research. Journal of the Practice of Cardiovascular Sciences, 5(3), 157.
Boru, T. B. (2018). Research methodology (Doctoral dissertation). University of South Africa.
Brookhart, S. M., & McMillan, J. H. (2019). Classroom Assessment and Educational Measurement. Routledge.
Brown, H. D., & Abeywickrama, P. (2010). Language assessment: Principles and classroom practices (2nd ed.). Pearson Education.
Bucaria, C. (2004). Lexical and syntactic ambiguity as a source of humor: The case of newspaper headlines. Humor: International Journal of Humor Research, 17(3), 279–309. https://doi.org/10.1515/humr.2004.013 .
Cohen, P., West, S. G., & Aiken, L. S. (2014). Applied multiple regression/correlation analysis for the behavioral sciences (3rd ed.). Psychology Press
Corsellis, A., Gentile, A., Ozolins, U., & Vasilakakos, M. (2001). Liaison interpreting: A handbook. Language International.
Crystal, D. (2003). A dictionary of linguistics and phonetics (5th ed.). Blackwell Publishing.
Fosgerau, M., & Karlström, A. (2010). The value of reliability. Transportation Research Part B: Methodological, 44(1), 38-49.
Fraser, J., Fahlman, D. W., Arscott, J., & Guillot, I. (2018). Pilot testing for feasibility in a study of student retention and attrition in online undergraduate programs. The International Review of Research in Open and Distributed Learning, 19(1).https://doi.org/10.19173/irrodl.v19i1.3326.
Halliday, M. A. K., & Matthiessen, C. M. I. M. (2004). An introduction to functional grammar (3rd ed.). Hodder Arnold.
Halliday, Michael, and Hasan, Ruqaiya. (1976). Cohesion in English. London: Longman.
Hameed, N. A., & Hameed, D. T. (2023). Assessing Iraqi university students’ ability to interpret lexical ambiguity. Journal of Tikrit University for Humanities, 30(5, 2), 116–135. https://doi.org/10.25130/jtuh.30.5.2.2023.24 .
Hardt, D. (1993). Verb phrase ellipsis: Form, meaning, and processing (Doctoral dissertation, University of Pennsylvania)
Hassan, K. M., & Abbas, S. H. (2023). Iraqi EFL university students’ ambiguity tolerance and performance in receptive skills: A correlational study. University of Baghdad, College of Education / Ibn Rushd for Human Sciences.
Haugh, O. M. (Ed.). (1968). Teaching the teacher of English: Selected papers and addresses delivered at the Sixth Conference on English Education, University of Colorado, March 28–30, 1968 (Part II). National Council of Teachers of English.
Heaton, J. B. (1988). Writing English language tests (2nd ed.). Longman.
Hughes, A. (1989). Testing for Language Teachers. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Hurford, J. & Heasley, B. (1983). Semantics: A Course book. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Kaufer, David. 1983. Metaphor and Its Ties to Ambiguity and Vagueness. Rhetoric Society Quarterly, 13, 209-220.
Khalifah, L., Altakhaineh, A. R. M., & Zibin, A. (2025). The impact of language proficiency on understanding ellipsis and substitution in the EFL context. Language Value, 18(2), 58–80. https://doi.org/10.6035/languagev.8723.
Khawalda, M. I., & Al-Saidat, E. M. (2012). Structural ambiguity interpretation: A case study of Arab learners of English. Global Journal of Human Social Science, 12(6), 17.https://globaljournals.org/GJHSS_Volume12/1-Structural-Ambiguity-Interpretation.pdf.
Lappin, S., & Fox, C. (Eds.). (2015). The handbook of contemporary semantic theory (2nd ed.). John Wiley & Sons.
Leonard, V., & Moore, H. (1978). Police organization and management (5th ed.). Foundation Press.
Merchant, J. (2004). Fragments and ellipsis. Linguistics and Philosophy, 27(6), 661–738. https://doi.org/10.1007/s10988-005-7378-3 .
Merchant, J. (2016). Ellipsis: A survey of analytical approaches. In J. van Craenenbroeck & T. Temmerman (Eds.), The handbook of ellipsis. Oxford University Press.
Nuhiu, M., & Ejupi, S. (2015). Ambiguity in English and Albanian sentences. Procedia – Social and Behavioral Sciences, 195, 948–956.https://doi.org/10.1016/j.sbspro.2015.06.431.
OSU (1998), The Ohio State University, Department of Linguistics. (1998). Language files: Materials for an introduction to language and linguistics. Ohio State University Press.
Othman, Z. A. (2022). Problems of translating English elliptical structures by Iraqi students of translation. Journal of Al-Frahedis Arts, 14(50, Part II), 541–549.https://doi.org/10.51990/jaa.14.50.2.27 .
Quirk, R., Greenbaum, S., Leech, G., & Svartvik, J. (1973). A university grammar of English. Longman.
Quirk, R., Greenbaum, S., Leech, G., & Svartvik, J. (1985). A comprehensive grammar of the English language. Longman.
Saleem, M. A. (2021). A study of ellipsis and elision in English. Journal of Tikrit University for Humanities, 28(2), 1–15.http://dx.doi.org/10.25130/jtuh.28.2.2021.23.
Serakioti, D., & Stefaneas, P. (2022). Ambiguity in argumentation: The impact of contextual factors on semantic interpretation. Studia Humana, 11, 1–6.https://doi.org/10.2478/sh-2022-0001 .
Shukla, S. (2020, June 25). Concept of Population and Sample. ResearchGate.https://www.researchgate.net/publication/346426707_CONCEPT_OF_POPULATION_AND_SAMPLE.
Simatupang, M. S. (2007). How ambiguous is the structural ambiguity. Lingua Cultura: Journal of Language and Culture, 1(2), 99–104.
Stageberg, N. C. (1958). Some structural ambiguities. The English Journal, 47(8), 479–486.
Stageberg, N. C. (1968). Structural Ambiguity for English Teachers. Selected Addresses Delivered at the Conference on English Education, 6, 29–34.http://www.jstor.org/stable/40171840.
Strazny, P. (Ed.). (2013). Encyclopedia of Linguistics. Routledge.
Treis, Y. (2018). Comparative constructions: An introduction. Linguistic Discovery, 16(1) [ResearchGate publication]. ResearchGate.
https://www.researchgate.net/publication/330866709_Comparative_Constructions_An_Introduction
Winkler, S. (2005). Ellipsis and focus in generative grammar. Berlin: Mouton de Gruyter. https://doi.org/10.1515/9783110890426 .
Yule, G. (2017). The study of language (6th ed.). Cambridge University Press.
Yule, G. (2020). The study of language (7th ed.). Cambridge University Press.
Zabotkina, V., Bottineau, D., & Boyarskaya, E. (2021). Cognitive mechanisms of ambiguity resolution. In B. M. Velichkovsky, A. L. Zhdanov, & V. D. Solovyev (Eds.), Intercognsci 2020 (Advances in Intelligent Systems and Computing, Vol. 1358, pp. 201–212). Springer. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-71637-0_24.