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In this paper, we demonstrate the effects of Information Theory measures on the processing of polysemous nouns and reveal that the sensitivity to multiple related senses can be learned from the linguistic context. We collected large-scale data and applied a correlation design to show that an increase in sense uncertainty (or sense diversity) is followed by a faster visual lexical decision. The facilitatory effect of sense uncertainty was revealed by the predictive power of entropy, followed by the additional analysis, which revealed that both the number of senses and the balance of sense probabilities affected processing. For the first time, the balance of sense probabilities was described via redundancy to demonstrate the effect of the numerical description of the balance of sense probabilities. Finally, we crossed distribution semantics and discrimination learning to show that polysemy effects can arise as a consequence of the principles of error-driven learning. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article investigates whether human masculine plural noun phrases (NPs) in Spanish, which can be interpreted with an exclusively masculine or a mixed-gender meaning, are a case of balanced or unbalanced ambiguity. The results of an experiment using a sentence continuation task with oral stimuli are consistent with the claim that masculine grammatical gender biases listeners toward an exclusively masculine interpretation. The acceptance rate of continuations with the pronoun uno/una referring to a masculine plural antecedent showed that the exclusively masculine meaning of the NP is accessed more frequently and involves a lower cognitive cost than the mixed-gender interpretation. Further, this effect interacts with the stereotypicality of the noun: nouns independently established to carry a masculine stereotype are less likely to be associated with a mixed-gender interpretation. The study also found that the speakers' attitudes toward nonsexist language predict their acceptance of the mixed-gender interpretation of masculine NPs. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

China's period of disunion in the tenth century posed moral challenges to individuals navigating the complex and unstable political situation. Later historians exploited the ambiguities of these challenges in giving their own assessments of those times, resulting in a complex array of assertions on matters pertaining to the Southern Tang. Appraisal of the character of the official Xu Xuan includes criticism around his work on the history of the Southern Tang and his meetings with the Song emperor Taizu. Accounts of Xu Xuan's conduct evolved in meaning over time as existing material found its way into new compilations and contexts. Tracing the course of these changes reveals how the history of the Southern Tang served the varying purposes of Song writers. Résumé: La période de désunion de la Chine au Xe siècle a posé des défis moraux aux individus qui évoluaient dans une situation politique complexe et instable. Les historiens ultérieurs ont exploité les ambiguïtés de ces défis pour formuler leurs propres jugements sur cette époque, ce qui a produit un éventail complexe de positions sur les questions relatives aux Tang du Sud. Les jugements sur le caractère de Xu Xuan et sa carrière officielle comprennent des critiques autour de son travail sur l' histoire des Tang du Sud et de ses rencontres avec l' empereur Song Taizu. Les récits de la conduite de Xu Xuan ont évolué au fil du temps, à mesure que les sources existantes trouvaient leur place dans de nouvelles compilations et de nouveaux contextes. Retracer l' évolution de ces changements révèle comment l' histoire des Tang du Sud a servi les différents objectifs des auteurs Song. 摘要: 十世紀中國的大分裂對需要應對這種複雜且動蕩政局的個人構成了一種道德上的挑戰。隨後的史家就這種挑戰的不明確性紛紛提出了自己的判斷，從而引申出有關南唐事宜的一些列繁複主張。對仕官徐鉉之品格的評價涉及了對其有關南唐歷史的文章的批評以及他與宋太祖的朝會。隨著相關材料不斷被納入新的文集和語境，有關徐鉉作為的敘述也歷經了意義上的變化。對這些變化的追溯因此也能揭示出南唐歷史如何服務於宋代文人不同的意圖。 [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Previous studies have reported that temporarily ambiguous sentences sometimes cause reading disruption (garden-path effects). These studies have interpreted their finding as indicating that the human sentence processing device (the processor) initially assigns incorrect structures and subsequently attempts revision. That is a logical interpretation. However, no previous studies have demonstrated evidence of a causal relationship between garden-path effects and initial misanalysis. Besides, there is currently limited evidence regarding whether the processor conducts revision. The present study reports two self-paced reading experiments that investigated these fundamental issues about garden-path effects. Experiment 1 demonstrated that the processor initially misanalyses temporarily ambiguous sentences and consequently encounters garden-path effects and persists with initial misinterpretations. Experiment 2 similarly observed garden-path effects. Additionally, there was evidence that the processor constructs globally correct structures during revision. These findings provide evidence that garden-path effects result from initial misanalysis, and the processor conducts revision upon disambiguation. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

How do learners gather new information during word learning? One possibility is that learners selectively sample items that help them reduce uncertainty about new word meanings. In a series of cross‐situational word learning tasks with adults and children, we manipulated the referential ambiguity of label‐object pairs experienced during training and subsequently investigated which words participants chose to sample additional information about. In the first experiment, adult learners chose to receive additional training on object‐label associations that reduce referential ambiguity during cross‐situational word learning. This ambiguity‐reduction strategy was related to improved test performance. In two subsequent experiments, we found that, at least in some contexts, children (3–8 years of age) show a similar preference to seek information about words experienced in ambiguous word learning situations. In Experiment 2, children did not preferentially select object‐label associations that remained ambiguous during cross‐situational word learning. However, in a third experiment that increased the relative ambiguity of two sets of novel object‐label associations, we found evidence that children preferentially make selections that reduce ambiguity about novel word meanings. These results carry implications for understanding how children actively contribute to their own language development by seeking information that supports learning. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Restrictive contextual information has been found to bias syntactic disambiguation, when only one alternative leads to a meaningful interpretation. The current study tests whether disambiguation can be influenced by nonrestrictive cues – when several alternatives are equally plausible. We first evaluated if modifier number biased the disambiguation of number- and case-ambiguous nouns in Basque. In a noun phrase comprehension paradigm, ambiguous noun number judgments were biased by preceding modifier number. Then, using a preamble completion paradigm, we examined whether headnoun disambiguation and thus sentence completion was also biased by modifier number. Our results suggest that nonrestrictive information (singular and plural number) can affect disambiguation. We also report task differences in the overall interpretation of ambiguous Basque nouns, as well modifier-induced agreement errors. We suggest that the parser uses any available context information when there is ambiguity, including preceding modifier markings. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Pitch accent serves multiple duties (encoding lexical accent, syntactic structure, and focus) in spoken Japanese. This study investigates how listeners interpret a role-ambiguous pitch prominence surfacing as F0 rise, which could be a cue to the resolution of a syntactic ambiguity between two possible branching structures, or a signal of contrastive focus on the constituent accompanied by the rise. Two visual world paradigm experiments tested the same Japanese linguistic stimuli with and without pitch emphasis on the second word of structures of the following form: modifier + N1 + N2. In Experiment 1, the visual context suppressed the availability of the contrastive interpretation; in Experiment 2, the visual context made the contrastive interpretation available. We found that the same pitch event can be interpreted as both syntax-encoding and contrastencoding information within the course of processing the same sentence, as long as contextual information is made visually available. When contrastive focus is pragmatically felicitous, it is computed immediately, as soon as the incoming input is accompanied by a notable pitch prominence (Experiment 2). The same prosodic cue can then be re-interpreted as a signal to syntax after the branching ambiguity is recognized due to subsequent input (Experiments 1 and 2). This is most consistent with the view that an initially assigned prosodic boundary is exploited for re-interpretation. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Many experiments have studied attraction errors in number agreement (e.g. ‘The key to the cabinets were rusty’). It has been noted that singular heads with plural dependents (attractors) trigger larger attraction effects than plural heads with singular attractors, and that in languages with morphological case, morphologically ambiguous attractors trigger larger effects (accusative plural forms coinciding with nominative plural were compared to unambiguous case forms). In Russian, the nominative plural forms of some nouns coincide not only with their accusative plural forms but also with the genitive singular. In one production and two comprehension experiments, such genitive singular forms were found to trigger larger attraction effects than morphologically unambiguous genitive plural forms. Accusative plural forms coinciding with the nominative plural were shown to be the most effective attractors. These results have implications for different models of attraction and for other discussions in morphology concerning ambiguity processing, different approaches to syncretism and the problem of lexical insertion. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Four eye-tracking experiments examined how violations of the Gricean maxim of quantity affect reading. Experiments 1 and 2 showed that first-pass reading times for size-modified definite nouns ( the small towel ) were longer when the modifier was redundant, as the context contained one rather than two possible referents, whereas first-pass times for bare nouns ( the towel ) were unaffected by whether the context contained multiple referents that resulted in ambiguity. Experiment 3 showed that unlike redundant size modifiers, redundant color modifiers did not increase first-pass times. Experiment 4 confirmed this finding, demonstrating that the effect of redundancy was dependent on the meaning of the modifier. We propose that initial referential processing is led by the lexico-semantic representation of the referring expression rather than Gricean expectations about optimal informativeness: Redundancy of a size-modifier immediately disrupts comprehension because the processor fails to activate the referential contrast implied by the meaning of the modifier, whereas referential ambiguity has no immediate effect, as it allows the activation of at least one semantically-compatible referent. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Psycholinguistic research using the visual world paradigm has shown that the processing of sentences is constrained by the visual context in which they occur. Recently, there has been growing interest in the interactions observed when both language and vision provide relevant information during sentence processing. In three visual world experiments on syntactic ambiguity resolution, we investigate how visual and linguistic information influence the interpretation of ambiguous sentences. We hypothesize that (1) visual and linguistic information both constrain which interpretation is pursued by the sentence processor, and (2) the two types of information act upon the interpretation of the sentence at different points during processing. In Experiment 1, we show that visual saliency is utilized to anticipate the upcoming arguments of a verb. In Experiment 2, we operationalize linguistic saliency using intonational breaks and demonstrate that these give prominence to linguistic referents. These results confirm prediction (1). In Experiment 3, we manipulate visual and linguistic saliency together and find that both types of information are used, but at different points in the sentence, to incrementally update its current interpretation. This finding is consistent with prediction (2). Overall, our results suggest an adaptive processing architecture in which different types of information are used when they become available, optimizing different aspects of situated language processing. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

Syntactic priming without lexical overlap is well-documented in language production. In contrast, reading-time comprehension studies, which typically use locally ambiguous sentences, generally find syntactic priming only with lexical overlap. This asymmetry has led some researchers to propose that distinct mechanisms underlie the comprehension and production of syntactic structure. Instead, we propose that methodological differences in how priming is assessed are largely responsible for the asymmetry: in comprehension, lexical biases in a locally ambiguous target sentence may overwhelm the influence of syntactic priming effects on a reader’s interpretation. We addressed these issues in a self-paced reading study by (1) using target sentences containing global attachment ambiguities, (2) examining a syntactic structure which does not involve an argument of the verb, and (3) factoring out the unavoidable lexical biases associated with the target sentences in a mixed-effects regression model. Under these conditions, syntactic priming affected how ambiguous sentences were parsed, and facilitated reading times when target sentences were parsed using the primed structure. This resolves discrepancies among previous findings, and suggests that the same mechanism underlies syntactic priming in comprehension and production. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

Highlights: [⿢] We study the ambiguities generated by numerals and regular scalar items like ⿿some⿿. [⿢] We compare the processing costs associated with their weak and strong readings. [⿢] The strong readings attached to ⿿some⿿ come at an extra memory cost. [⿢] For numerals, conversely, this cost is associated with the weak readings. [⿢] Consequences of these findings for the core semantics of numerals are discussed. [Copyright &y& Elsevier]

Abstract: Two experiments examined the effect of intonational phrase boundaries (Experiment 1) and interactions between intonational phrase boundaries and contrastive accents (Experiment 2) in parsing, using a sentence continuation judgment task. Across experiments, we found that intonational phrase boundaries were consistently interpreted as signaling syntactic structure as long as there were no alternative reasons for them to be present. Experiment 2 showed that different prosodic cues interact in syntactic processing. The effect of intonational phrase boundaries was modulated by contrastive accents through weaker intermediate phrase boundaries that followed contrastive accents, suggesting that the effects of pitch accents are indirect in syntactic processing. [Copyright &y& Elsevier]

Three experiments were conducted to investigate how syntactic-category and semantic information is processed in visual word recognition. The stimuli were two-character Chinese words in which semantic and syntactic-category ambiguities were factorially manipulated. A lexical decision task was employed in Experiment 1, whereas a semantic relatedness judgment task and a syntactic-category judgment task were adopted in Experiments 2 and 3, respectively. A semantic ambiguity disadvantage was observed in all three experiments, whereas a syntactic-category ambiguity disadvantage was only found in Experiment 3. In addition, no significant semantic ambiguity×syntactic-category ambiguity interaction was obtained across the three experiments. These results are consistent with the view that in isolated visual word recognition, the semantic information is crucial, but the syntactic-category information is not, at least in Chinese. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Abstract: Neuroimaging studies have shown that the left inferior frontal gyrus (LIFG) plays a critical role in semantic and syntactic aspects of speech comprehension. It appears to be recruited when listeners are required to select the appropriate meaning or syntactic role for words within a sentence. However, this region is also recruited during tasks not involving sentence materials, suggesting that the systems involved in processing ambiguous words within sentences are also recruited for more domain-general tasks that involve the selection of task-relevant information. We use a novel dual-task methodology to assess whether the cognitive system(s) that are engaged in selecting word meanings are also involved in non-sentential tasks. In Experiment 1, listeners were slower to decide whether a visually presented letter is in upper or lower case when the sentence that they are simultaneously listening to contains words with multiple meanings (homophones), compared to closely matched sentences without homophones. Experiment 2 indicates that this interference effect is not tied to the occurrence of the homophone itself, but rather occurs when listeners must reinterpret a sentence that was initially misparsed. These results suggest some overlap between the cognitive system involved in semantic disambiguation and the domain-general process of response selection required for the case-judgement task. This cognitive overlap may reflect neural overlap in the networks supporting these processes, and is consistent with the proposal that domain-general selection processes in inferior frontal regions are critical for language comprehension. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Abstract: The semantic structure of many idioms is constituted by concrete (literal) actions that convey abstract (figurative) mental states and events. We investigated the comprehension of idioms in an Italian patient (MC) with selective atrophy of the left temporal pole, inferior and middle temporal gyri who showed a reversed concreteness effect on nouns (). Since idioms convey abstract figurative meanings, we assessed whether idiom comprehension was preserved. We tested the extent to which the number of meanings associated with a linguistic unit affected her ability to provide a meaning definition for ambiguous and unambiguous idioms, and for polysemous and non-polysemous words. Only the comprehension of unambiguous idioms was impaired despite the fact that both types of idiom convey abstract mental states. Polysemous word meanings were preserved. Our results suggest that: (1) the integrity of the left temporal lobe is required to process unambiguous idioms; (2) a relatively undamaged right temporal lobe allows the comprehension of ambiguous linguistic units. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Lexical ambiguity resolution was examined in children aged 7 to 10 years and adults. In Experiment 1, participants heard sentences supporting one (or neither) meaning of a balanced ambiguous word in a cross-modal naming paradigm. Naming latencies for context-congruent versus context-incongruent targets and judgements of the relatedness of targets to the sentence served as indices of appropriate context use. While younger children were faster to respond to related targets regardless of the sentence context, older children and adults showed priming only for context-appropriate targets. In Experiment 2, only a single-word context preceded the homophone, and in contrast to Experiment 1, all groups showed contextual sensitivity. Individual working-memory span and inhibition ability were also measured in Experiment 2, and more mature executive function abilities were associated with greater contextual sensitivity. These findings support a developmental model whereby sentential context use for lexical ambiguity resolution increases with age, cognitive processing capacity, and reading skill. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Abstract  This paper presents a general modeling strategy for ambiguity resolution (AR) and position estimation (PE) using three or more phase-based ranging signals from a global navigation satellite system (GNSS). The proposed strategy will identify three best “virtual” signals to allow for more reliable AR under certain observational conditions characterized by ionospheric and tropospheric delay variability, level of phase noise and orbit accuracy. The selected virtual signals suffer from minimal or relatively low ionospheric effects, and thus are known as ionosphere-reduced virtual signals. As a result, the ionospheric parameters in the geometry-based observational models can be eliminated for long baselines, typically those of length tens to hundreds of kilometres. The proposed modeling comprises three major steps. Step 1 is the geometry-free determination of the extra-widelane (EWL) formed between the two closest L-band carrier measurements, directly from the two corresponding code measurements. Step 2 forms the second EWL signal and resolves the integer ambiguity with a geometry-based estimator alone or together with the first EWL. This is followed by a procedure to correct for the first-order ionospheric delay using the two ambiguity-fixed widelane (WL) signals derived from the integer-fixed EWL signals. Step 3 finds an independent narrow-lane (NL) signal, which is used together with a refined WL to resolve NL ambiguity with geometry-based integer estimation and search algorithms. As a result, the above two AR processes performed with WL/NL and EWL/WL signals respectively, either in sequence or in parallel, can support real time kinematic (RTK) positioning over baselines of tens to hundreds of kilometres, thus enabling centimetre-to-decimentre positioning at the local, regional and even global scales in the future. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article discusses the systematic description of the most productive particle, which has been used in English phrasal verb construction "up" and aims to possibly highlight all possible ambiguity. Accordingly, the particle "up" appears to be used most of the time, as an intensifier or as an aspect marker, which is said to have changed the activity into one of accomplishment and has the chance to be deleted in almost 40% of the cases being scrutinized. It is being concluded that the subcategorization refinements would help mitigate ambiguity that involves English phrasal verbs and that some uncertainty still remains, when the ambiguity involves subject commutation.

The problem of ambiguity in games is discussed, and a class of ambiguous games is identified. A total of 195 participants played strategic-form games of various sizes with unidentified co-players. In each case, they first chose between a known-risk game involving a co-player indifferent between strategies and an equivalent ambiguous game involving one of several co-player types, each with a different dominant strategy, and then they chose a strategy for the preferred game. Half the players knew that the ambiguous co-player types were equally likely, and half did not. Half expected the outcomes to be known immediately, and half expected a week's delay. Known-risk games were generally preferred, confirming a significant strategic ambiguity aversion effect. In the delay conditions, players who knew that the ambiguous co-player types were equally likely were significantly less ambiguity averse than those who did not. Decision confidence was significantly higher in 2 × 2 than in larger games. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This research considers the importance of pragmatic motivation in the diffusion of grammaticalized forms, focusing upon the changes in meaning of the construction be+supposed to and the ambiguity that emerges when multiple interpretations become available. The passive form of the main verb to suppose develops into a grammaticalized semimodal construction with deonth: and epistemic senses. This work examines the ways that the ambiguity that develops when the pregrammaticalized and the grammaticalized forms coexist can itself propel the change: assisting in the initial spread of the grammaticalized usage and then suppressing the older pregrammaticalized form. Using the British National Corpus, the Chadwyck-Healey Database of Nineteenth-Century Fiction, and the ARCHER corpus. I find that the influences of genre and frequency can create pragmatic conditions which encourage the diffusion of grammaticalized forms between text types. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The ambiguity disadvantage (slower processing of ambiguous words relative to unambiguous words) has been taken as evidence for a distributed semantic representational system like that embodied in parallel distributed processing (PDP) models. In the present study, we investigated whether semantic ambiguity slows meaning activation, as PDP models would predict, by examining homophone effects in semantic categorisation tasks. We observed a homophone effect in a go/no-go semantic categorisation task, but not in a yes/no semantic categorisation task. Our results suggest that previously reported ambiguity effects may have been due to the decision phase of the semantic categorisation task and not to the semantic processing phase, in which case the interpretation of the ambiguity disadvantage will need to be reconsidered. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Abstract: This paper investigates how people resolve syntactic category ambiguities when comprehending sentences. It is proposed that people combine: (a) context-dependent syntactic expectations (top–down statistical information) and (b) context-independent lexical-category frequencies of words (bottom–up statistical information) in order to resolve ambiguities in the lexical categories of words. Three self-paced reading experiments were conducted involving the ambiguous word “that” in different syntactic environments in order to test these and other hypotheses. The data support the top–down/bottom–up approach in which the relative frequencies of lexical entries for a word are tabulated independent of context. Data from other experiments from the literature are discussed with respect to the model proposed here. [Copyright &y& Elsevier]

Refinement of actions is a core operation in the hierarchical design methodology for concurrent systems. In this paper, we develop an approach of action refinement for concurrent systems with not only the notation of real-time but also with causal ambiguity, which often exists and appears in real application areas. The systems are modeled in terms of a timed extension of bundle event structures with causal ambiguity. Under a certain partial order semantics, the behavior of the refined system can be inferred compositionally from the behavior of the original system and from the behavior of the systems used to refine actions with explicitly represented start points. A variant of a linear-time equivalence termed pomset trace equivalence and a variant of a branching-time equivalence termed history preserving bisimulation equivalence based on the partial order semantics are both congruences under the refinement. The refinement operation behaves thus well and meets the commonly expected properties. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The status of words like either, both and neither, here referred to as ‘correlative adverbs’ or ‘correlatives’, is controversial. Using relevant data from Germanic languages. I shall show that the analyses of Schwarz (1999) and Larson (1985) are inadequate. Instead, I will suggest an analysis based on the assumptions in Hendriks (2001a,b, 2002): that correlatives are focus particles. Their syntactic position is discussed with the hypothesis that focus particles are adverbs, and I suggest. inspired by the adverb hierarchies of Cinque (1997), that there is a designated Correlative Phrase position. My analysis includes overt and covert movement, which explains some correlations between different interpretations of scope and syntactic positions, as discussed also by Larson (1985) and Bayer (1996). My analysis not only gives an account of this kind of scope ambiguity, but also accounts for the fact that each correlative is associated with only one conjunction; that with phrasal coordination, the correlative can be displaced from the conjunction phrase; and that with sentential coordination, the correlative can be part of the first conjunct. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

We report three eye-movement experiments that investigated whether alternative syntactic analyses compete during syntactic ambiguity resolution. Previous research (Traxler. Pickering, & Clifton, 1998: Van Gompel, Pickering, & Traxler, 2001) has shown that globally ambiguous sentences are easier to process than disambiguated sentences, suggesting that competition does not explain processing difficulty. However, the disambiguation in these studies was delayed relative to the initial point of ambiguity, so they do not rule out models which claim that competition is very short-lasting. The current experiments show that globally ambiguous sentences are easier to process than disambiguated sentences even when the disambiguation is immediate. Furthermore, globally ambiguous sentences are no harder to process than syntactically unambiguous sentences. We argue that the results are inconsistent with currently implemented constraint-based competition models, and support variable-choice reanalysis models such as the unrestricted race model. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

An ambiguity disadvantage (slower responses for ambiguous words, e.g., bank, than for unambiguous words) has been reported in semantic tasks (L. R. Gottlob, S. D. Goldinger, G. O. Stone, & G. C. Van Orden, 1999; Y. Hino, S. J. Lupker, & P. M. Pexman, 2002; C. D. Piercey & S. Joordens, 2000) and has been attributed to the meaning activation process. The authors tested an alternative explanation: The ambiguity disadvantage arises from the decision-making process in semantic tasks. The authors examined effects of ambiguity on unrelated trials in a relatedness decision task, because these trials are free from response competition created by ambiguous words on related trials. Results showed no ambiguity effect on unrelated trials (Experiments 2, 3c, and 5c) and an ambiguity disadvantage on related trials (Experiments 3a, 3b, 5a, and 5b). [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article investigates coordination of verbal adjuncts and complements in English, considering coordinations of adjunct with adjunct, complement with complement, and adjunct with complement, for both non-WH and WH elements, using the conjunctions or, and, and but. Previous analyses have never to my knowledge covered all of these cases. It is shown that syntactic or (compositional) semantic constraints on coordination fail to cover all the facts, as do ambiguity-based explanations. Better (though still incomplete) coverage is provided by an analysis based on event semantics and neo-Gricean conversational implicature. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper explores a theory of the meaning-form relation based on ranked and violable constraints [A. Prince, P. Smolensky, 1993. Optimality Theory: Constraint Interaction in Generative Grammar, Rutgers University, New Brunswick, and University of Colorado, Boulder], using the English genitive construction as a testing ground. Our main thesis is that partially ordered optimality-theoretic grammars allow us to relate four apparently independent empirical phenomena: (i) categorical grammaticality contrasts; (ii) variation and preferences in expression; (iii) ambiguity and preferences in interpretation; (iv) lexical organization. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In two experiments, we examined the influence of situation-evoking stimuli on the resolution of lexical ambiguity. In Experiment 1, we examined situation-evoking stimuli at an early NP position. Readers were asked to establish whether specific entities were likely to participate as agents in contextually defined situations. Naming latencies demonstrated that defined situations headed by likely agents evoked a domain of reference that included only the situation-appropriate meaning of a targeted lexical ambiguity. In contrast, defined situations headed by unlikely agents evoked a domain of reference that did not include either meaning of the intended ambiguous word. In Experiment 2, we examined situation-evoking stimuli at a later direct object position. The specificity of the theme/patient role filler was manipulated, where the linguistic expressions were either specific or general with respect to a given contextual situation. The results showed that contexts with specific situation-evoking stimuli were rated as strongly biased and provided a domain of reference for the immediate resolution of lexical ambiguity, whereas contexts with nonspecific role fillers were rated as ambiguous and provided a domain of reference that was supportive of both meanings of an ambiguous word. The results were discussed within a contextual-feature-sensitive model of language processing. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Discusses a certain argument for the claim that definite descriptions are obscure between a Russellian quantificational interpretation and a predicational interpretation which is found in the book "Everything Linguistics Have Always Wanted to Know About Logic (But Were Ashamed to Ask)," by James McCawley. Basis of McCawley for the argument of the ambiguity of definite descriptions; Problem with the argument; Skepticism about free-wheeling ambiguity claims.

Presents a study which investigated how anxiety influences the use of contextual information in the resolution of ambiguity. Effects of emotion on interpretation; Overview of studies on the role of context in clarifying ambiguous verbal information; Methods used; Measurement of anxiety.

Donnellan (1966) makes a convincing case for two distinct uses of definite descriptions. But does the difference between the uses reflects an ambiguity in the semantics of descriptions? This paper applies a linguistic test for ambiguity to argue that the difference between the uses is not semantically significant. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The aim of this paper is to describe a technique for identifying the sources of several types of syntactic ambiguity in Arabic Sentences with a single parse only. Normally, any sentence with two or more structural representations is said to be syntactically ambiguous. However, Arabic sentences with only one structural representation may be ambiguous. Our technique for identifying Syntactic Ambiguity in Single-Parse Arabic Sentences (SASPAS) analyzes each sentence and verifies the conditions that govern the existence of certain types of syntactic ambiguities in Arabic sentences. SASPAS is integrated with the syntactic parser, which is based on Definite Clause Grammar (DCG) formalism. The system accepts Arabic sentences in their original script. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Analyzes the theoretical and methodological status of the traditional distinction between denotational ambiguity and vagueness. Unreliability of the definitional criterion; Confinement of the use of the criterion to denotational instead of referential phenomena; Absence of a cognitive distinction between ambiguity and vagueness despite the weakness of the metacognitive criteria; Derivation of an account of polysemy.

This work combines a set of available techniques – which could be further extended – to perform noun sense disambiguation. We use several unsupervised techniques (Rigau et al., 1997) that draw knowledge from a variety of sources. In addition, we also apply a supervised technique in order to show that supervised and unsupervised methods can be combined to obtain better results. This paper tries to prove that using an appropriate method to combine those heuristics we can disambiguate words in free running text with reasonable precision. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper describes a supervised algorithm for word sense disambiguation based on hierarchies of decision lists. This algorithm supports a useful degree of conditional branching while minimizing the training data fragmentation typical of decision trees. Classifications are based on a rich set of collocational, morphological and syntactic contextual features, extracted automatically from training data and weighted sensitive to the nature of the feature and feature class. The algorithm is evaluated comprehensively in the SENSEVAL framework, achieving the top performance of all participating supervised systems on the 36 test words where training data is available. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper describes the grling-sdm system, which is a supervised probabilistic classifier that participated in the 1998 SENSEVAL competition for word-sense disambiguation. This system uses model search to select decomposable probability models describing the dependencies among the feature variables. These types of models have been found to be advantageous in terms of efficiency and representational power. Performance on the SENSEVAL evaluation data is discussed. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Presents a case-based algorithm for word sense disambiguation. Suggestion that the local context of a word is a set of paths in the dependency tree of the sentence that contains the word; Use of a thesaurus automatically extracted from a large corpus to bridge the gap between the training examples and the testing corpus; Related works on word sense disambiguation algorithms.

The paper examines the task of Word Sense Disambiguation (WSD) critically and compares it with Part of Speech (POS) tagging, arguing that the ability of a writer to create new senses distinguishes the tasks and makes it more problematic to test WSD by the mark-up-and-model paradigm, because new senses cannot be marked up against dictionaries. This serves to set WSD apart and puts limits on its effectiveness as an independent NLP task. Moreover, it is argued that current WSD methods based on very small word samples are also potentially misleading because they may or may not scale up. Since all-word WSD methods are now available and are producing figures comparable to the smaller scale tasks, it is argued that we should concentrate on the former and find ways of bootstrapping test materials for such tests in the future. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article cites a study that aims to use phonetic ambiguities to explore the influences of nonacoustic variables on the perception of speech. From the top-down, multiple-levels-of-analysis view of speech perception, the researchers started with the general premise that the amount of acoustic information in the signal trades off in production with available contextual higher order constraints of syntax and semantics. Thus, with increased higher order constraints in the context of production, there should be less acoustic representation in the signal, resulting in increased ambiguity between pair members.

• The ambiguity of pertinent terms creates ambivalence for extrapolation of research findings. • The experimental/quasi-experimental research limits its pedagogical relevance. • The scope of feedback scope research has to be broadened. • Pertinent terms have to be clarified. • More research should be conducted in authentic classroom conditions. The debate on written corrective feedback (WCF) sparked by Truscott (1996) has spawned a growing literature on focused/comprehensive WCF (i.e. feedback scope) in L2 writing. Such research, being largely experimental/quasi-experimental, has generated findings that are tangentially relevant to authentic classrooms. This article attempts to problematize existing feedback scope research by examining three key issues – ambiguity of pertinent terms, laboratory-like classroom conditions, and narrow scope of research. The article also provides suggestions on how these problems may be addressed so that feedback scope research could be made more relevant to authentic classroom contexts. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

How can people effectively understand ambiguous messages? A possible answer is that understanding is not always effective, and ambiguity may not be resolved at all. Swets, B., Desmet, T., Clifton, C., & Ferreira, F. (2008) showed that syntactic ambiguities are read faster when sentence meaning was underspecified. We aim to find out whether similar meaning underspecification is possible with lexical ambiguities. If no ambiguous word's meaning is favored by the sentence context, any meaning that comes to reader's mind will fit the sentence, and ambiguous words in such contexts might be read faster than in more restrictive ones. In a restrictive context, the reader will need time to activate the correct meaning of the ambiguous word and suppress the competing ones. We tested 33 nouns with three meanings each (direct, metaphorical, and metonymic). For each noun, an experimental set with four conditions (contextual sentence favoring direct, metaphoric, metonymic or none of the meanings) was created. The contextual sentence was followed by the target sentence with the ambiguous word, which was constant across conditions. 80 people read experimental sentences while their eye-movements were tracked. We expected to see a speedup on the ambiguous word in the underspecified condition compared to the other conditions. But we found that it was read longer in the metaphoric sense condition instead: SFD - 95% CrI = [1, 25]ms, TT - 95% CrI = [1, 25]ms. These findings demonstrate that lexical ambiguities are processed in a different way than syntactical ones. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]