6 ms·

bill clinton, is that you?! but seriously, in contrast to natural language, the article lays out the basics of mathematically-based logic, not for its own acco

bill clinton, is that you?! but seriously, in contrast to natural language, the article lays out the basics of mathematically-based logic, not for its own accord, but as groundwork for the more interesting later sections talking about context-dependence and reasonableness. the reason natural language has so much ambiguity is not because our brains couldn't have come up with a rigorously logical language, but because the world is ambiguous and language reflects that.

RedEdward71 6y ago
I immediately thought of slick willy as well.
foldr 6y ago
>but because the world is ambiguous and language reflects that. This doesn't seem like a very satisfying explanation. Take one particular example of a structurally ambiguous sentence of English: "The company couldn't make the car fast enough". The two meanings are completely distinct (speed of production vs. speed of the car). There's no fuzziness about this distinction out there in the world. The speed at which a car travels and the speed at which it's made are two completely distinct properties.
- joosters 6y ago
  And yet, in the real world, people could use that sentence as part of a discussion without causing any confusion or ambiguity. Because sentences don’t exist on their own, they have a wider context which can focus their meaning. Human language is succinct. We don’t generally say twenty words when ten would do. If the context made your example sentence clear, why would a speaker need to add any words to clarify it further?
  - foldr 6y ago
    Yes, obviously. I am not saying that there is anything bad about structural ambiguities of this sort.
- eindiran 6y ago
  That is an interesting example because it looks like semantic ambiguity rather than syntactic ambiguity. But actually it is about structure as you commented -- something like this: [S [DP [D The [N company]]] [VP [AuxP [Aux couldn't] [V make]] [DP [D the] [NP [N car] [AdjP [Adv fast] [A enough]]]] vs [S [DP [D The [N company]]] [V' [VP [AuxP [Aux couldn't] [V make]] [DP [D the] [N car]]] [AdjP [Adv fast] [A enough]]] Regarding the meat of your comment, it is quite difficult to banish all ambiguity from natural language for a variety of reasons, but we don't really need to: humans are incredibly good at handling linguistic ambiguity. There has been a lot of fascinating research on the topic: in particular, I recommend reading up about anaphora resolution[0] and garden path sentence repair[1], because the literature includes some info on what is happening in the brain, which is significantly more detailed than what exists for most other types of linguistic ambiguity. All of this ambiguity in natural language is something that continues to be huge hurdle for NLP: it turns out that fetching the right information from the context to resolve all the ambiguities that arise in a single conversation is completely non-trivial, despite how easy humans make it look! An interesting case study in the opposite direction (ie attempting to remove ambiguities from natural language) is Ithkuil[2]: it is a conlang that attempted to completely banish (semantic and lexical) ambiguity and it ended up being ridiculously hard to use or learn at all. [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anaphora_(linguistics) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anaphora_(linguistics) [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Garden-path_sentence https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Garden-path_sentence [2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ithkuil https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ithkuil If anyone is curious, you can plug those trees into here (http://mshang.ca/syntree/ http://mshang.ca/syntree/) and it will draw them for you. But my tree drawing skills are very rusty, so they are pretty basic/bad.
  - baddox 6y ago
    I'm confused about your sentence parse notation. Isn't "fast" an adjective in one of the interpretations (namely the one parsed the same as "The company couldn't make the car safe enough")? Doesn't that "safe" example point out something else? The example with "fast" is only ambiguous because it's common to use "fast" as both an adjective and an adverb? The sentence with "safe" doesn't sound to me like an acceptable way to say that the company's manufacturing process was too dangerous.
adrianmonk 6y ago
Also time constraints. It's possible to be much more precise even with informal language, but it would take forever. So, for efficiency, words don't really deliver an idea to the listener. Instead, it's assumed that the listener is working toward the idea through their own reasoning, and words fill in only the necessary gaps to help them get there or to help them get there more quickly. You more or less reverse engineer what their thought process must be, then you do a gap analysis between what they're probably thinking and what you want them to be thinking, and you give them the pieces of info necessary for them to make the leap.
- WalterBright 6y ago
  Poul Anderson in "Brain Wave" had a most interesting take on what increased intelligence would look like. People said less and less to each other, but conveyed more meaning.
terravion 6y ago
I would say it is more than the world, we use language to discuss our intentions, desires, beliefs, willingness, etc. All of which there is value to speakers to being ambiguous. Some languages are even better than English at giving speakers the ability to dial up or down ambiguity when expressing ostensibly the same intention, in ways that a careful listener would find signal in.
newacct583 6y ago
> bill clinton, is that you?! For the record: Clinton was making a banal and uncontroversial, if inartfully stated (and awfully hilarious in hindsight), observation on the tense of a verb. He was right, actually. But yeah, that was a sound bite for the ages.
samus 6y ago
One other factor is that our brains _are_ able to do it. I guess we merge the sentence with our context and gradually realize the meaning, while rejecting the more bizarre parses without thinking twice about them. On the other hand, it is quite possible to stump humans with out-of-context questions and statements. In these moments we realize how much we rely on context.

RedEdward71 6y ago

I immediately thought of slick willy as well.

foldr 6y ago

>but because the world is ambiguous and language reflects that. This doesn't seem like a very satisfying explanation. Take one particular example of a structurally ambiguous sentence of English: "The company couldn't make the car fast enough". The two meanings are completely distinct (speed of production vs. speed of the car). There's no fuzziness about this distinction out there in the world. The speed at which a car travels and the speed at which it's made are two completely distinct properties.

joosters 6y ago
And yet, in the real world, people could use that sentence as part of a discussion without causing any confusion or ambiguity. Because sentences don’t exist on their own, they have a wider context which can focus their meaning. Human language is succinct. We don’t generally say twenty words when ten would do. If the context made your example sentence clear, why would a speaker need to add any words to clarify it further?
- foldr 6y ago
  Yes, obviously. I am not saying that there is anything bad about structural ambiguities of this sort.
eindiran 6y ago
That is an interesting example because it looks like semantic ambiguity rather than syntactic ambiguity. But actually it is about structure as you commented -- something like this: [S [DP [D The [N company]]] [VP [AuxP [Aux couldn't] [V make]] [DP [D the] [NP [N car] [AdjP [Adv fast] [A enough]]]] vs [S [DP [D The [N company]]] [V' [VP [AuxP [Aux couldn't] [V make]] [DP [D the] [N car]]] [AdjP [Adv fast] [A enough]]] Regarding the meat of your comment, it is quite difficult to banish all ambiguity from natural language for a variety of reasons, but we don't really need to: humans are incredibly good at handling linguistic ambiguity. There has been a lot of fascinating research on the topic: in particular, I recommend reading up about anaphora resolution[0] and garden path sentence repair[1], because the literature includes some info on what is happening in the brain, which is significantly more detailed than what exists for most other types of linguistic ambiguity. All of this ambiguity in natural language is something that continues to be huge hurdle for NLP: it turns out that fetching the right information from the context to resolve all the ambiguities that arise in a single conversation is completely non-trivial, despite how easy humans make it look! An interesting case study in the opposite direction (ie attempting to remove ambiguities from natural language) is Ithkuil[2]: it is a conlang that attempted to completely banish (semantic and lexical) ambiguity and it ended up being ridiculously hard to use or learn at all. [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anaphora_(linguistics) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anaphora_(linguistics) [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Garden-path_sentence https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Garden-path_sentence [2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ithkuil https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ithkuil If anyone is curious, you can plug those trees into here (http://mshang.ca/syntree/ http://mshang.ca/syntree/) and it will draw them for you. But my tree drawing skills are very rusty, so they are pretty basic/bad.
- baddox 6y ago
  I'm confused about your sentence parse notation. Isn't "fast" an adjective in one of the interpretations (namely the one parsed the same as "The company couldn't make the car safe enough")? Doesn't that "safe" example point out something else? The example with "fast" is only ambiguous because it's common to use "fast" as both an adjective and an adverb? The sentence with "safe" doesn't sound to me like an acceptable way to say that the company's manufacturing process was too dangerous.

adrianmonk 6y ago

Also time constraints. It's possible to be much more precise even with informal language, but it would take forever. So, for efficiency, words don't really deliver an idea to the listener. Instead, it's assumed that the listener is working toward the idea through their own reasoning, and words fill in only the necessary gaps to help them get there or to help them get there more quickly. You more or less reverse engineer what their thought process must be, then you do a gap analysis between what they're probably thinking and what you want them to be thinking, and you give them the pieces of info necessary for them to make the leap.

WalterBright 6y ago
Poul Anderson in "Brain Wave" had a most interesting take on what increased intelligence would look like. People said less and less to each other, but conveyed more meaning.

terravion 6y ago

I would say it is more than the world, we use language to discuss our intentions, desires, beliefs, willingness, etc. All of which there is value to speakers to being ambiguous. Some languages are even better than English at giving speakers the ability to dial up or down ambiguity when expressing ostensibly the same intention, in ways that a careful listener would find signal in.

newacct583 6y ago

> bill clinton, is that you?! For the record: Clinton was making a banal and uncontroversial, if inartfully stated (and awfully hilarious in hindsight), observation on the tense of a verb. He was right, actually. But yeah, that was a sound bite for the ages.

samus 6y ago

One other factor is that our brains _are_ able to do it. I guess we merge the sentence with our context and gradually realize the meaning, while rejecting the more bizarre parses without thinking twice about them. On the other hand, it is quite possible to stump humans with out-of-context questions and statements. In these moments we realize how much we rely on context.