| mna |
Description |
<p>Ambiguity is widespread in natural language, so that a single piece of text can
potentially be interpreted in different ways by different readers.</p><p>We are investigating
how to model noxious ambiguity, which is about the relationship between text and a
group of readers: text displays noxious ambiguity when it is interpreted differently
by different readers. Ambiguity is innocuous if different readers interpret it in
the same way, even if different interpretations are possible.</p><p>Our approach uses
a collection of heuristics and distribuitional measures to predict which passages
in text are likely to give rise to misunderstandings, because they exhibit noxious
ambiguity. So far, by validating the heuristics against collections of human judgements,
we have been able to show that noxious apmbiguity does occur in text (specifically
software requirements).</p><p>We are currently focussing on expanding the range of
linguistic phenomena which can lead to noxious ambiguity, and the heuristics needed
to recognise it.</p> |