The example I like of how we use world-knowledge to resolve ambiguities so easily that we don't even notice the existence of the ambiguity is the pair of sentences "Safety glasses must be worn when in the laboratory" and "Pets must be carried when on the escalator" These are grammatically parallel, but if you're in the lab without glasses, you need to go get some. But if you're on the escalator without a pet, you don't need to go get one. Andy On Mon, Jun 15, 2020 at 4:16 PM Andres Valloud <ten@smallinteger.com> wrote:
A great deal of language interpretation depends on context, and in particular cultural context. Trying to achieve language fluency without a cultural background is not going to work well.
On 6/15/20 05:28, James Propp wrote:
Math gives us one way to dissect the ambiguity of sentences like “In New York City, someone is attacked by a pigeon every thirty seconds” (is it always the same person? is it always the same pigeon?) by way of quantifiers. Does linguistics have its own way of talking about the different interpretations of such a sentence?
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