Ambiguous Referencer

An Ambiguous Referencer is a referencer that can be mapped to more than one referent (by a Referencer Grounding Task).

• AKA: Ambiguous Reference, Ambiguous.
• Context:
  • It can have insufficient Reference Information for an Agent to map the Reference to a Referent.
  • It can be:
    • an Ambiguous Definition.
  • …
• Example(s):
  • an Ambiguous Entity Reference;
    • An Ambiguous Person Mention, such as: “I sent [John] an email yesterday.”
    • An Implicit Person Mention, such as: “I saw [the king of pop] last year.”
  • an Ambiguous Relation Reference.
  • an Ambiguous Fact.
  • an Ambiguous Question.
  • an Ambiguous Mention.
    • an Ambiguous Concept Mention.
    • an Ambiguous Word Mention.
    • an Ambiguous Identifier.
  • …
• Counter-Example(s):
  • an Unambiguous Referencer.
    • A URL, such as: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Reference.
    • An implicit person mention, such as: “Did you see [the king of pop] on MTV yesterday?”, if the audience is a North American from the late 1980s
• See: Formal Specification, Vague, Vagueness.

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References

2009

• http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ambiguity
  • Ambiguity is the property of being ambiguous, where a word, term, notation, sign, symbol, phrase, sentence, or any other form used for communication, is called ambiguous if it can be interpreted in more than one way. Ambiguity is different from vagueness, which arises when the boundaries of meaning are indistinct. Ambiguity is context-dependent: the same linguistic item (be it a word, phrase, or sentence) may be ambiguous in one context and unambiguous in another context. For a word, ambiguity typically refers to an unclear choice between different definitions as may be found in a dictionary. A sentence may be ambiguous due to different ways of parsing the same sequence of words.

• (WordNet, 2009) ⇒ http://wordnetweb.princeton.edu/perl/webwn?s=ambiguous
  • S: (adj) equivocal, ambiguous (open to two or more interpretations; or of uncertain nature or significance; or (often) intended to mislead) "an equivocal statement"; "the polling had a complex and equivocal (or ambiguous) message for potential female candidates"; "the officer's equivocal behavior increased the victim's uneasiness"; "popularity is an equivocal crown"; "an equivocal response to an embarrassing question"
  • S: (adj) ambiguous (having more than one possible meaning) "ambiguous words"; "frustrated by ambiguous instructions, the parents were unable to assemble the toy"
  • S: (adj) ambiguous (having no intrinsic or objective meaning; not organized in conventional patterns) "an ambiguous situation with no frame of reference"; "ambiguous inkblots"

• http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vagueness
  • The term vagueness denotes a property of concepts (especially predicates). A concept is vague:
    • if the concept's extension is unclear;
    • if there are objects which one cannot say with certainty whether they belong to a group of objects which are identified with this concept or which exhibit characteristics that have this predicate (so-called "border-line cases");
    • if the Sorites paradox applies to the concept or predicate.
  • In everyday speech, vagueness is an inevitable, often even desired effect of language usage. However, in most specialized texts (e.g., legal documents) vagueness is distracting and should be avoided whenever possible.

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