But at the same time, people use sentences like this very frequently and there seems to be some sort of heuristic we are using to disambiguate it. It's not the

But at the same time, people use sentences like this very frequently and there seems to be some sort of heuristic we are using to disambiguate it. It's not the case that every time an ambiguous sentence is used in real life people will stop and consider the possible cases. Granted, sometimes we will make the wrong assumption on how to disambiguate sentences that are absolutely ambiguous. Another example where semantic closeness won't really help you (though context/situation would help): "I looked at the man with the telescope." Case 1: I looked at the man using the telescope. Case 2: I looked at the man who was holding the telescope.