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语义模糊可能是学术语言精确性方面最容易出现的问题，我将从六个方面来阐述。
术语语义不明
在中国文化中，有些人更喜欢模糊的描述，比如“气”“元”等词，营造了一种神秘的浪漫主义色彩。文学中也有一些模糊化的修辞手法，“一千个人眼中有一千个哈姆雷特”，一部《红楼梦》可以让后世人从不同的角度进行解读，这就是文学的魅力。但学术写作有不同的思路（详见第2章），含混不清的语言、生涩的术语、可以从多个角度理解的语言等，都是大忌。学术写作就是要排除歧义，使作者所要传达的意思清晰明了，让读者对作者的表述只有一种理解方式。比如下面这句话：
This preference for the biological movements, though, was not as strong as that in the TD group, suggesting compromised sensitivity to social cues in ASD.
这里“compromised sensitivity”是自创的表述方式，也没有说明与什么比较，表达得很模糊，所以我将这句话改为：
This preference for the biological movements, though, was not as strong as that in the TD group, suggesting that they are still not as sensitive as typical children to orient to biological cues.
再比如下面这个段落，第一次读的时候觉得很晦涩，后来发现段落中出现的几个术语，作者都没有给出明确的释义。
As actual actions in Experiment 2, self-generated actions entail the generation of a forward model that enables the prediction of the system along with its sensory consequences (Wolpert & Ghahramani, 2000).Hence, it is through this process that they may garner a“sense of agency”, as reflected by the product of self (Frith & Wolpert, 2003; Shergill et al., 2005).Otherwise, a number of neuroimaging studies have shown that the process of imagining own action shares the same system that governs the actual action production (Grezes&Decety, 2001; Hétu et al., 2016).Therefore, such a process in Experiment 3 might also generate the agent of an action and allow one to predict future action effects even if they don't actually perform the action.
这个段落读下来的感觉是单词都认识，但是句子看不懂。我对“prediction of the system”“sensory consequences”“action effects”这几个短语都有疑问。“otherwise”的用法也很奇怪。作者后来把这段话改为：
In Experiment 2, the self-generated actions could entail the generation of a forward model that enables the connection between self and the self-related object along with its sensory consequences (e.g., visual signals, proprioceptive signals) (Wolpert & Ghahramani, 2000).Hence, it is through this process that they may garner a“sense of agency”, as reflected by the product of self (Frith & Wolpert, 2003; Shergill et al., 2005).This explanation can also be supported at the neural level: a number of neuroimaging studies have shown that the process of imagining own action shares the same system that governs the actual action production (Grezes&Decety, 2001; Hétu et al., 2016).Therefore, such a process in Experiment 3 might also generate the agent of an action and allow one to predict consequences of action even if individuals don't actually perform the action.
之所以出现很多类似的问题，是因为作者假设读者与他拥有一样的知识储备，没有很好地交代术语的语境和精准定义，并给出具体的例子，导致了写作的模糊性。一个好方法是在给出一个可能产生模糊解释的术语之后，马上给出精准的释义，并举例说明。例如在本书的第5章“文章的质量”中，“质量”可以指文章多方面的特征，所以我在第一段就直接给出定义：“我这里说的质量不好，主要指的是‘品相不佳’，即低级错误太多。这些低级错误包括拼写错误（typo）、语法错误、格式错误、语言的倾向性问题、细节把控不佳等”，同时在前言中也做了说明。
在《文思泉涌》一书中，作者吐槽了心理学家写的论文。他说，心理学家总是喜欢用一些让自己看起来很聪明的词，比如他们不用“smart”，而用“sophisticated”；他们不用“persons”“people”这么好的词，而用“participants”“individuals”（不如persons精确，也可以指非人的实验对象）；他们用“such that”把不相干的两个句子连起来；他们不会用分号和排比句（因为怕重复）；他们还经常写“existing literature”，好像还有“nonexisting literature”似的；等等。看到这些，你是不是觉得“中枪”了？
再举一些实际论文中的例子。
（1）The ASD and the TD groups differed in their response time in the visual search task.
问题： “differ” 有多种方式，ASD组是更快还是更慢呢？需要给出更精准的说明。
改为： The ASD group displayed shorter response time in the visual search task relative to the TD group.
（2）The 6-year-old children performed better in A than B conditions，which is different from the 5-year-old children.
问题： 这里说的是6岁孩子在A条件下比B条件下表现更好，但5岁孩子不是。那么5岁孩子的表现有两种可能，一种是在B条件下比A条件下好，另一种是在两种条件下无差异。
改为： The 6-year-old children performed better in A than B conditions, whereas the 5-year-old children performed similarly across these two conditions.
（3） Differing in the unique correlates around age 5, reading and writing in Chinese became significantly correlated a year later.
问题： 也是“different”系列问题，6岁的时候阅读和写作相关显著，与5岁时不同。那么5岁是什么样子呢，读者可能猜出是不显著，但是不够明确。
改为： Word reading and word writing were not associated at age 5 but were significantly correlated a year later.
在改动后的版本里，就可以明确知道5岁时的相关是不显著的。
（4）To test whether the two groups showed different accuracies in audiovisual congruent trials of the two conditions，we compared their accuracies of these trials in the two conditions separately using Mann-Whitney U test.
问题： 到底是“two conditions”不一样还是“two groups”不一样？而且整句话很啰唆。
改为： We used a Mann-Whitney U test to test the group differences in the accuracies in congruent trials of the two conditions.
这样“compare the group differences”就没有歧义了，是指两组间的不一样。
（5）To test whether the two groups showed similar McGurk effect in two conditions，we conducted a permutation test for the two-way ANOVA with group as a between subject factor and eyes-condition (open-eyes vs.closed-eyes) as a within subject factor.
问题： 到底是“two groups”之间相似还是“two conditions”之间相似？
改为： To test the group and condition differences of the McGurk effect, we further conducted a two-way ANOVA with Group as the between-subject factor and Condition (open-eyes vs.closed-eyes) as the within-subject factor.
由此可见，在学术写作中与“different”相关的词需要慎用，如果使用了，就要仔细核对会不会造成歧义。
另外，慎用缩写。当然可以使用广为人知的心理学术语缩写，比如IQ，还有专业论文中的ASD（autism spectrum disorder）、TD（typically developing），因为这些缩写出现的频次太高了。但是对于只出现一两次的缩写，因为不容易记住，会造成记忆的负担，所以建议写全称。
利伯恩提出，为了避免模糊，对于以下几项，需要把两样内容放在一起写：
（1）一个新的概念和它的解释
（2）一个缩写和它的全称
（3）一个介词和它指代的名词、短语
（4）一个动词和宾语
（5）背景和它解释的内容
限定词的范围
还有一些歧义来源于数量词的限定范围。比如下面这两个例子：
（1）十几个学校的老师参加了培训。
（2）数千位学生的家长参加了毕业典礼。
这两句话中的数量词很容易产生歧义。“十几个”是指学校还是老师的数量呢？“数千位”是用来修饰学生还是家长呢？这种歧义在英文中也可能出现。比如：
The TD group's McGurk effect could be predicted by their eye-looking time only in the open-eyes condition.
这句话里“only”的限定范围令人费解，不如改成：
The TD group's McGurk effect could be predicted by their eye-looking time in the open-eyes condition but not in the closed-eyes condition.
代词指代不明
代词指代不明也是一种常见的语义模糊类型，这里也通过一些例句来具体说明。
（1）We found that the ASD group showed weaker audiovisual speech integration compared with the TD group.It was consistent with most of the previous studies.
问题： “it” 指代什么？通常指代距离最近的一个词，难道是“TD group”？
改为： We found that the ASD group showed weaker audiovisual speech integration compared with the TD group.This finding is consistent with most previous studies.
或者改为： Our finding that the ASD group showed weaker audiovisual speech integration compared with the TD group is consistent with most previous studies. （合并成一句话）
或者改为： We found that the ASD group showed weaker audiovisual speech integration compared with the TD group, which is consistent with most previous studies.（which 用来指代整个从句）
（2）Therefore，such a process in Experiment 3 might also generate the agent of an action and allow one to predict future action effects even if they don't actually perform the action.It has generally been assumed that the overlap between actual action and virtual action is due to the activity of mirror neurons, which can serve a self-other matching function for action coding (Oberman & Ramachandran, 2007; Rizzolatti & Sinigaglia, 2016; Williams, 2008).Interestingly, in Experiment 1, children also observed the experimenter place the card in a basket.This raises the question why it cannot help strengthen the self in children with ASD when they observed another's moving actions.
问题： 段落中用下划线标识出来的两个词，“they”指的是谁？“it”指的又是什么？这都是指代不明的问题。
改为： Therefore, such a process in Experiment 3 might also generate the agent of an action and allow one to predict consequences of action even if individuals don't actually perform the action.The overlap between actual action and virtual action is considered to result from the activity of mirror neurons, which can serve a self-other matching function for action coding (Oberman&Ramachandran, 2007; Rizzolatti&Sinigaglia, 2016; Williams, 2008).Interestingly, in Experiment 1, children also observed the experimenter place the card in a basket.This raises the question why merely observing others'action cannot help strengthen the self in children with ASD.The most reasonable explanation is that children tend to process the action performed by others from the third-person perspective.
（3）The cellular automaton (CA) cell，a natural candidate to model the electrical activity of a cell, is an ideal component to use in the simulation of intercellular communications, such as those occurring between cardiac cells, and to model abnormal asynchronous propagations, such as ectopic beats, initiated and propagated cell-to-cell, regardless of the complexity of their patterns. （摘自《科技英语写作进阶》）
问题： 这里的“their”指代的是哪一个词组呢？我在课堂上问这个问题的时候，列了几个词组作为选项，每个选项都有若干学生举手，大部分人是不清楚的。代词通常被用来指代距离最近的一个词，但句中的“their”事实上指代的是“abnormal asynchronous propagations”而不是“ectopic beats”，所以可以把代词去掉。比如把最后的“regardless of the complexity of their patterns”改为“with or without complex patterns”，也可以把代词换成所要指代的名词（如改为“however complex the propagation pattern may be”）。
长句子
在学术写作中，不建议用太复杂或者过长的句子，以免句子解构不当引起误解。在阅读文章时遇到过长且句式复杂的句子，需要花很长时间解构句子结构，读者容易感到云里雾里。GRE考题中经常出现这样的长句子，比如下面这句：
The physicist rightly dreads precise argument, since an argument that is convincing only if it is precise loses all its force if the assumptions on which it is based are slightly changed, whereas an argument that is convincing though imprecise may well be stable under small perturbations of its underlying assumptions.
既然能成为考题，说明这类句子的解构确实非常难。我们在平时的写作中可以把句子改短，一句话变成两句话，也可以删掉不需要的细节。那么多长的句子算过长呢？我觉得一般长度在四行以上的句子就要谨慎使用了。
再重申一次，学术论文不是炫耀词汇量和复杂句型的地方。长句子和生僻词并不能显得你聪明，只会让读者却步。正如史蒂芬·平克所说，学术写作的本质是与人分享你激动人心的发现，而大多数人写作是为了证明自己做的事情有多难，或者其他人是错的。