Word Sense Ambiguity

A Word Sense Ambiguity is ambiguity about a word sense (of a word item).

• Context:
  • It can be resolved by the Word Sense Disambiguation Task.
• See: Entity Mention.

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References

• http://www.cse.unsw.edu.au/~billw/nlpdict.html#wordsenseambig
  • word-sense ambiguity: A kind of ambiguity where what is in doubt is what sense of a word is intended. One classic example is in the sentence "John shot some bucks". Here there are (at least) two readings - one corresponding to interpreting "bucks" as meaning male deer, and "shot" meaning to kill, wound or damage with a projectile weapon (gun or arrow), and the other corresponding to interpreting "shot" as meaning "waste", and "bucks" as meaning dollars. Other readings (such as damaging some dollars) are possible but semantically implausible. Notice that all readings mentioned have the same syntactic structure, as in each case, "shot" is a verb and "bucks" is a noun. See also structural ambiguity and referential ambiguity.

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