Lexical Ambiguity in Urhobo
Keywords:
Ambiguity, Tone, Polysemy, UrhoboAbstract
This paper examines lexical ambiguity in Urhobo, a tonal language. Lexical ambiguity is the presence of two or more possible meanings within a single word. The specific objectives of this study are to identify lexical ambiguity in Urhobo and examine lexical ambiguity at the word/independent and associative constructions. This paper follows the qualitative paradigm using a descriptive research design for its analysis of data. The data for analysis are gathered through introspection. The paper reveals that lexical ambiguity occurs in the Urhobo language. Lexical ambiguity gives a word multiple interpretations and it is seen mostly in polysemous and homonymous words in the language. This study recommends that more researchers should explore the relationship between ambiguity and idiomatic expressions in the Urhobo language.
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