There's also an ambiguity in the word 'attacked': Suppose we define 'attack' as 'physical battery by some part of the pigeon'; then receiving pigeon droppings on one's head qualifies one as the recipient of an 'attack'. So the newspaper headline reads: "In New York City, someone is attacked by a pigeon every thirty seconds", but buried deep in the story is the acknowledgment that 99.9999% of these 'attacks' are in the form of pigeon poop, so pigeon battery via direct contact with a pigeon's beak, for example, might occur only once a year. This form of 'definition inflation' is a media epidemic far more prevalent and far worse than COVID19. At 05:28 AM 6/15/2020, 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