children and ambiguity?

Question

"ambiguity
The presence of two or more distinct meanings for a single word or expression. In itself, ambiguity is a common, harmless, and often amusing feature of ordinary language. When unnoticed in the context of otherwise careful reasoning, however, it can lead to one of several informal fallacies.
Example:"I'll give you a ring tomorrow." could signify either the promise of a gift of jewelry or merely an intention to telephone.
Note the difference between ambiguity and vagueness."

How do kids learn the difference? Cause not all ambiguity is not as simple as the 'ring'.
This came up as a similar question: http://uk.answers.yahoo.com/question/index;_ylt=Apnz0zm8NGE7edhdbHzUT9dkBgx.?qid=20060922023256AAN6BE9

Answer 1

In my experience, often, learnt behaviours are derived from experience of outcome, for example if consistency is the norm then ambiguity becomes less likely, however, when two meanings are given in context, then the child may become uncertain or confused about how to reason the situation.

Ambiguity might also be based on possibility, in an uncertain environment it can be safer to guage responses by being ambiguous in ones own response.

Assessing final outcomes is something reasonably natural, but guessing is something else and comes from an ill informed base

And then of course we have the child who is a natural 'performer', where ambiguity is an intuitive response to a situation as it presents.

Ambiguity is a necessary weapon against insecurity and as a defence mechanism, after all, where there are two options, the safest choice may not follow the expected outcome, children may learn early on the to have an alternative response ready may be the safest option.

And then, of course, the harmless fun of ambiguity, a base for the gift of humour.

Answer 2

In the quoted instance, they learn tommorow, when either the phone rings or the mail arrives, if they expected the opposite!

Then they ask questions and build up schemas for similar ambiguous situations.

Then childhood is over, the phone doesn't ring, no parcel arrives and it's hello world...

Answer 3

They learn by comparing the outcomes with the statement - i.e. did that person call or did they give them jewelry? They learn by mistakes and they learn by necessity. They learn by asking and by people simply telling them what it means.