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? Jim
Hi Jim, We as linguists always try to (correctly) use grammar and punctuation so as to avoid ambiguity. However, sometimes it's best to leave it to the reader's interpretation and very often that's what the writer's looking for. Best, Ana (Jaco's official translator and interpreter) On Mon, 15 Jun 2020, 14:30 James Propp, <jamespropp@gmail.com> 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?
Jim _______________________________________________ math-fun mailing list math-fun@mailman.xmission.com https://mailman.xmission.com/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/math-fun
Jim, I just had a Zoom meeting with a physicist who has undertaken the project of implementing enough linguistics on a computer in order to have a conversation about chess. His program is now able to “understand” about the first half of “Bobby Fisher teaches chess.” As you can imagine, chess sentences often have several quantifiers. The linguistic term that covers quantifiers is “scoping” and he recommends Steedman and Isard, "Taking Scope: The Natural Semantics of Quantifiers" (The MIT Press) Not directly related, but here are two fine examples showing how even parts of speech can be ambiguous: “Time flies like an arrow” “Fruit flies like a banana” -Veit
On Jun 15, 2020, at 8:28 AM, James Propp <jamespropp@gmail.com> 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?
Jim
VE: "Not directly related, but here are two fine examples showing how even parts of speech can be ambiguous: 'Time flies like an arrow.' 'Fruit flies like a banana.' Generally recognized as a contribution of Anthony Oettinger on the subject of grammar by computer (~1963), it has been difficult apparently to find 1960s quotations of the two concept sentences juxtapositioned. As recently as 2010, quote investigator Garson O'Toole had it happen only "by 1982". I had a go at it last month and found two relevant articles, the earlier one by Edmund Berkeley in November 1966 (although he used peach instead of banana). http://gladhoboexpress.blogspot.com/2020/05/time-flies.html
The most beautiful theory for dealing with such quantifier scope ambiguities in natural language is "Montague Grammar" originated by Richard Montague in the early 1970s and developed in various ways since. The approach uses generalized quantifiers to provide rigorous, compositionally constucted mappings between sentences of natural language and models in intensional logic. For a summary, see: https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/montague-semantics/ George http://georgehart.com On 6/15/2020 8:28 AM, 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?
Jim _______________________________________________ math-fun mailing list math-fun@mailman.xmission.com https://mailman.xmission.com/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/math-fun
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?
Jim _______________________________________________ math-fun mailing list math-fun@mailman.xmission.com https://mailman.xmission.com/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/math-fun
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?
Jim _______________________________________________ math-fun mailing list math-fun@mailman.xmission.com https://mailman.xmission.com/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/math-fun
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participants (7)
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Andres Valloud -
Andy Latto -
George Hart -
Hans Havermann -
Jacobo Gonzalez -
James Propp -
Veit Elser