Lexical Ambiguity Research Articles

LEXICAL AND SYNTACTIC AMBIGUITY IN THE VACCINE NEWS HEADLINES OF THE STAR

Since the Covid-19 vaccination rollout, the news media has played an essential role in reporting the vaccine-related news to reduce the risk of getting and spreading the Covid-19 disease. However, people nowadays are preoccupied with busy schedules that they just glance at the news headlines and determine what they imply. If a word, phrase, or sentence in the headlines has more than one interpretation, they may misinterpret them and receive the wrong information. Therefore, this study aimed to investigate the lexical and syntactic ambiguity in the vaccines headlines of The Star news and to determine how these ambiguities affected the readers’ interpretation of the headlines. After collecting the headlines from The Star news, the definitions of the words and phrases were deduced using Oxford Learner’s Dictionary, while the sentence structures were identified using parsing. A questionnaire was also disseminated to the respondents to obtain different interpretations of the words or sentences. Next, a semi-structured interview was conducted with nine participants from three different educational backgrounds. The interviews were then transcribed and analysed thematically. The findings revealed that the lexical and syntactic ambiguity existed in the vaccine-related news headlines in The Star, with five lexical ambiguities and three syntactic ambiguities. Nonetheless, the participants were not affected by ambiguities because of the context and knowledge of the topic. The research study also posed a few limitations and gaps, where the other considerations and a larger sample of participants could be considered.

The Psychology of Comedy

The Psychology of Comedy

Humor Discourse in Art Performances of Shadow Puppets Cenk Blonk

Humor discourse as non-bonafide discourse is frequently found daily. The existence of humor, besides for entertainment purposes, is also being used for educational purposes, also culture and language conservation. Some approaches can be implied to understand how discourse humor is created. One of them is through language elements and pragmatism flouting. This research of humor discourse in art performances of shadow puppets aims to analyze the utilization of language elements and pragmatism flouting. This study uses a mixed-method approach. The data of this research are in the form of conversation found in the dialogue of shadow puppets performances. As the results, it was found that humor discourse is formed by the first utilization of language elements such as phonological utilization (5.56%), lexical ambiguity (3.70%), grammatical ambiguity (31.48%), rhyme utilization, and language style (59.26%); secondly, Maxim flouting such as quantity flouting (39.13%), quality flouting (21.74%), manner flouting (17.39%), relevance flouting (21.74%).

Deep Learning-based Assessment of Oncologic Outcomes from Natural Language Processing of Structured Radiology Reports.

To train a deep natural language processing (NLP) model, using data mined structured oncology reports (SOR), for rapid tumor response category (TRC) classification from free-text oncology reports (FTOR) and to compare its performance with human readers and conventional NLP algorithms. In this retrospective study, databases of three independent radiology departments were queried for SOR and FTOR dated from March 2018 to August 2021. An automated data mining and curation pipeline was developed to extract Response Evaluation Criteria in Solid Tumors-related TRCs for SOR for ground truth definition. The deep NLP bidirectional encoder representations from transformers (BERT) model and three feature-rich algorithms were trained on SOR to predict TRCs in FTOR. Models' F1 scores were compared against scores of radiologists, medical students, and radiology technologist students. Lexical and semantic analyses were conducted to investigate human and model performance on FTOR. Oncologic findings and TRCs were accurately mined from 9653 of 12 833 (75.2%) queried SOR, yielding oncology reports from 10 455 patients (mean age, 60 years ± 14 [SD]; 5303 women) who met inclusion criteria. On 802 FTOR in the test set, BERT achieved better TRC classification results (F1, 0.70; 95% CI: 0.68, 0.73) than the best-performing reference linear support vector classifier (F1, 0.63; 95% CI: 0.61, 0.66) and technologist students (F1, 0.65; 95% CI: 0.63, 0.67), had similar performance to medical students (F1, 0.73; 95% CI: 0.72, 0.75), but was inferior to radiologists (F1, 0.79; 95% CI: 0.78, 0.81). Lexical complexity and semantic ambiguities in FTOR influenced human and model performance, revealing maximum F1 score drops of -0.17 and -0.19, respectively. The developed deep NLP model reached the performance level of medical students but not radiologists in curating oncologic outcomes from radiology FTOR.Keywords: Neural Networks, Computer Applications-Detection/Diagnosis, Oncology, Research Design, Staging, Tumor Response, Comparative Studies, Decision Analysis, Experimental Investigations, Observer Performance, Outcomes Analysis Supplemental material is available for this article. © RSNA, 2022.

Ambiguous Expressions Found in Essays Written by the English Students at IKIP Budi Utomo Malang

Naturally, language has sound as form and meaning to provide comprehensive understanding in communication. Sound or form is a representation of surface structure, while meaning a representation of deep structure. Language meaning in Semantics belongs to one of the most important elements being analyzed nowadays because it is the language soul. One of the interesting topics which becomes a great concern that people are discussing is ambiguous meaning that is always found on such expressions as words, phrases, and sentences in language. This article exposes the research findings on ambiguous expressions as found in the English essays written by the English students of IKIP Budi Utomo Malang. The research is descriptive-qualitative one as a content analysis since it describes phenomena which naturally occurs. They are ambiguous expressions such as words, phrases, and sentences on the English essays written by the English students. The subject of the research is the fifth semester students of 2018/2019 that totals 45 students taking English Semantics.The sample was then taken based on the certain criteria, namely their origin representation and competences which finally became 12 students. Based on the data analysis, it was found that the ambiguous expressions found on the English students essays covers lexical and structural ambiguities. In lexical ambiguity, it was found that not all the students’ English essays are lexically and structurally ambiguous. It means that some of the esssays are lexically and structurally ambiguous.

A Survey for News Credibility in Social Networks

Text mining has been a vital area that has been linked to some fields of research such as machine learning, data analysis and gathering, and information recovery. To extract knowledge and information, Natural Language Processing (NLP) was used alternative techniques. Text mining analyses unstructured data to provide critical data and information plans in a timely manner. Nowadays everyone uses online communication activities to keep in touch with others in their daily life. As a result, they're a great way to connect. Not sorting in a paragraph in a format suitable for word recognition has become a point of contention. intensity can cause a variety of inconsistencies, such as lexical, semantic, linguistic, and syntactic ambiguities, determining the proper data arrangement. Information and data are required for learning things and reaching knowledge. This paper covered how to use text mining to determine the credibility of news on social media. The findings of this study could be used as the basis for future text mining research.

Context Facilitates the Decoding of Lexically Ambiguous Words for Adult Literacy Learners.

An estimated one-fifth of adults in the United States possess low literacy skills, which includes minimal proficiency in reading and difficulty processing contextual information. One way to study reading behavior of adults with low literacy is through eye movement studies; however, these investigations have been generally limited. Thus, the present study collected eye movement data (e.g., gaze duration, total time, regressions) from adult literacy learners while they read sentences to investigate online reading behavior. We manipulated the lexical ambiguity of the target words, context strength, and context location in the sentences. The role of vocabulary depth, which refers to the deeper understanding of a word in one's vocabulary, was also examined. Results show that adult literacy learners spent more total time reading ambiguous words compared to control words and vocabulary depth was significantly correlated with processing of lexically ambiguous words. Participants with higher depth scores were more sensitive to the complexity of ambiguous words and more effective at utilizing context compared to those with lower depth scores, which is reflected by more total time reading ambiguous words when more informative context was available and more regressions made to the target word by participants with higher depth scores. Overall, there is evidence to demonstrate the benefits of context use in lexical processing, as well as adult learners' sensitivity to changes in lexical ambiguity.

Lexical ambiguity detection in professional discourse

Professional discourse is the language used by specialists, such as lawyers, doctors and academics, to communicate the knowledge and assumptions associated with their respective fields. Professional discourse can be especially difficult for non-specialists to understand due to the lexical ambiguity of commonplace words that have a different or more specific meaning within a specialist domain. This phenomena also makes it harder for specialists to communicate with the general public because they are similarly unaware of the potential for misunderstandings.In this article, we present an approach for detecting domain terms with lexical ambiguity versus everyday English. We demonstrate the efficacy of our approach with three case studies in statistics, law and biomedicine. In all case studies, we identify domain terms with a precision@100 greater than 0.9, outperforming the best performing baseline by 18.1–91.7%. Most importantly, we show this ranking is broadly consistent with semantic differences. Our results highlight the difficulties that existing semantic difference methods have in the cross-domain setting, which rank non-domain terms highly due to noise or biases in the data. We additionally show that our approach generalizes to short phrases and investigate its data efficiency by varying the number of labeled examples.

Entity linking systems for literature reviews

Computer-assisted methods and tools can help researchers automate the coding process of literature reviews and accelerate the literature review process. However, existing approaches for coding textual data do not account for lexical ambiguity; that is, instances in which individual words have multiple meanings. To counter this, we developed a method to conduct rapid and comprehensive analyses of diverse literature types. Our method uses entity linking and keyword analysis and is embedded into a literature review framework. Next, we apply the framework to review the literature on digital disruption and digital transformation. We outline the method’s advantages and its applicability to any research topic.

Analysis of Lexical of English Spoken by Non-Native Speakers in British Television Series Mind Your Language Session 1

In language, ambiguity is often considered a problem. Ambiguity can be found in every aspect of language whether it is written or spoken. Research in terms of ambiguity mostly found in written language, but this study conducted using spoken data. In this research, the ambiguity that is going to be studied is an ambiguity spoken by Non-native English speaker in a humoristic way. Lexical ambiguity is usually caused by homonymy and polysemy. This research aims to describe the ambiguity in the British television series Mind Your Language Season 1 and the writer focus on the lexical ambiguity and contextual meaning. The type of this research is descriptive qualitative. The technique of collecting the data is note-taking technique. The writer describes all possible meanings from the ambiguous jokes by analyzing the contextual meaning. This study conducted to find types of lexical ambiguity used by non-native English and described all possible meanings from the ambiguous jokes within the context. There are two lexical ambiguities found in this data, polysemy and homonymy. The writer found 51 words considered as lexical ambiguity. From 51 words, 15 words were classified as polysemy and 36 as homonymy. In homonymy, there are 18 words categorized in both homonyms and homophones. By analyzing the contextual meaning, the writer reveals the correct interpretation and intention of the ambiguous words. The writer also found the reason why the jokes are considered as lexical ambiguity. Finally, the writer reveals the type of lexical ambiguity used by non-native English.Keywords: ambiguity; contextual meaning; lexical ambiguity; polysemy; homonymy

When do languages use the same word for different meanings? The Goldilocks principle in colexification

Lexical ambiguity is pervasive in language, and often systematic. For instance, the Spanish word dedo can refer to a toe or a finger, that is, these two meanings colexify in Spanish; and they do so as well in over one hundred other languages. Previous work shows that related meanings are more likely to colexify. This is attributed to cognitive pressure towards simplicity in language, as it makes lexicons easier to learn and use. The present study examines the interplay between this pressure and the competing pressure for languages to support accurate information transfer. We hypothesize that colexification follows a Goldilocks principle that balances the two pressures: meanings are more likely to attach to the same word when they are related to an optimal degree—neither too much, nor too little. We find support for this principle in data from over 1200 languages and 1400 meanings. Our results thus suggest that universal forces shape the lexicons of natural languages. More broadly, they contribute to the growing body of evidence suggesting that languages evolve to strike a balance between competing functional and cognitive pressures.

A Bayesian interpretation of cross‐linguistic ambiguity tests

Cross‐linguistic comparisons serve as empirical tests generating evidence for and against lexical ambiguity in words like “good”, “know”, “the”, “can”, and “may”. Critics question such comparisons' validity. This article examines how cross‐linguistic comparisons are treated as tests and shows that they have two predominant forms: one modeled on modus tollens, and another on Bayes' theorem, where the former is an enthymematic version of the latter. This analysis reveals the strengths and weaknesses of cross‐linguistic comparisons, and thereby guides interpretation of their results. It concludes that cross‐linguistic comparisons generally yield stronger evidence against lexical ambiguity than for it.

What’s the Difference? Contributions of Lexical Ambiguity, Reading Comprehension, and Executive Functions to Math Word Problem Solving in Linguistically Diverse 3rd to 5th Graders

ABSTRACT Purpose Math word problem solving, a form of reading comprehension, is complicated by mathematical lexical ambiguity (e.g., the word difference can mean dissimilarity in everyday discourse but the answer in a subtraction problem in math). This study examined the role of mathematical lexical ambiguity in math word problem solving. Method Lexically ambiguous math word knowledge, reading comprehension, vocabulary breadth, executive function (EF) skills, and math word problem solving were assessed in 521 3rd- to 5th-grade emergent bilingual (EB) and English monolingual (EM) students. Results Students knew fewer math than common meanings of lexically ambiguous math words, and EBs knew fewer meanings than EMs. Multi-group path analysis indicated reading comprehension and lexically ambiguous math word knowledge contributed directly to math word problem solving and partially mediated the influence of EFs on math word problem solving. Conclusion Consistent with the language function hypothesis, language skills supported math word problem solving directly and mediated the influence of EF skills on math word problem performance for both EBs and EMs alike. Our findings move the field forward by revealing a specific mechanism by which EF skills contribute to a particular aspect of content area reading comprehension.

Semantic Perspective on Lexical Ambiguity in English Tetxbook

The goal of this study is to describe the many types of lexical ambiguity and how they are used in student English textbooks. Ullman Stephen proposed the linguistic ambiguity theory. The essay combined qualitative research with a content analysis technique. The words with lexical ambiguity are the subjects of this study. The data is made up of words, and the source is an English textbook. Reading, comprehending, and coding the text book that contains lexical ambiguity is the procedure for gathering data. The data analysis technique is then organized, familiarized, and interpreted. The findings of the study revealed that the text book contained two types of lexical ambiguity, Polisemy and Homonymy. Lexical Ambiguity can be assumed to exist in everyword with several meanings.
 Keywords: semantic; lexical ambiguity; textbook

A unified analysis of polar particles in Farsi

Polar Response Particles (PRPs) have been widely studied in the literature, discussing the essence of their ambiguity in polarity and (dis)agreement reading sys- tems (Pope 1976) and what affects the reading preference. In languages like English and Farsi, in which the same particles satisfy both readings, PRPs are ambiguous in response to negative initiatives (including questions and assertions). In Farsi, on the other hand, PRPs are not only used in assertive responses to polar initiatives, but they also appear in interrogatives like tag questions and alternative questions. In this paper, I propose a unified analysis of PRPs in Farsi in both forms. My analysis is based on the feature marking account (Roelofsen and Farkas 2015), and I propose a lexical ambiguity that can benefit the account for interrogative forms too. Moreover, I claim that bias in the initiatives affect the reading variation in ambiguous cases, in the sense that the stronger the bias in the antecedent the higher preference for the (dis)agreement reading over the comparison to polarity reading.

The Lexical Ambiguity in News Headlines of the Jakarta Post

The title of this study is “Lexical Ambiguity in News Headlines of The Jakarta Post”. This study deals with lexical ambiguity and its factors. This study aims to identify the lexical ambiguity and analyze the factors of lexical ambiguity. The data was taken from The Jakarta Post’s articles that were published throughout 2019-2021. The documentation method and the note-taking technique were used in collecting the data. The data was analyzed by using the theory of lexical ambiguity proposed by Ullmann (1967). The results of the study showed that there are four words found as lexical ambiguity and two factors of lexical ambiguity, namely polysemy and homonymy. The words ‘flood’ and ‘ghosting’ are classified as homonymy, and the words ‘promise’ and ‘curfew’ are classified as polysemy.

Cultural Evolution of Precise and Agreed-Upon Semantic Conventions in a Multiplayer Gaming App.

The amount of information conveyed by linguistic conventions depends on their precision, yet the codes that humans and other animals use to communicate are quite ambiguous: they may map several vague meanings to the same symbol. How does semantic precision evolve, and what are the constraints that limit it? We address this question using a multiplayer gaming app, where individuals communicate with one another in a scaled-up referential game. Here, the goal is for a sender to use black and white symbols to communicate colors. We expected that the players' mappings between symbols and colors would grow more specific over time, through a selection process whereby precise mappings are preferentially copied. We found that players become increasingly more precise in their use of symbols over the course of their interactions. This trend did not, however, result from selective copying of precise mappings. We explore the implications of this result for the study of lexical ambiguity, Zipf's Law of Meaning, and disagreements over semantic conventions.

Investigating Lexical And Syntactic Ambiguity On Native Facebook Celebritism

The objectives of the research are to know why do many readers not understand about the meaning of the facebook post by native facebook celebritism and to find out the types of ambiguity and dominant type of lexical and syntactical ambiguity use in Facebook Post by native facebook celebritism.In this research, researcher applied desriptive qualitative method. Qualitative research, like other types of research, is descriptive, with data collected in the form of words or images rather than numbers. Choosing, reading, and underlining were the methods used to collect data. Identifying, classifying, analyzing, calculating, and interpreting the data were all used to analyze the data. Homonymy, polysemy, synonymy, and antonymy were among the linguistic ambiguities. Surface structure ambiguity and deep structure ambiguity were the two types of syntactical ambiguity.

Interrogative Pronouns in Dagbani and Likpakpaanl

This paper provides an analysis of the properties of interrogative pronouns of Mabia languages drawing data from Dagbani and Likpakpaanl. We focus on the inventory, internal structure, and key grammatical characterisation of the interrogative pronouns. We contend that interrogative pronouns are salient syntactic elements in the content question systems of these languages. In addition, we demonstrate that number marking, distinction between human/non-human and lexical ambiguity are salient grammatical properties of these interrogative pronouns. We further show that the inflection for number employs both suppletive and nonsuppletive patterns. We also contend that the interrogative pronouns that specify for the semantic domains of [+human], [-human] and [+thing] are sensitive to number, since they alternate for plurality (ŋuni ~banima (who.sg ~ who-pl), bo~bonima (what.sg ~what-pl), dini~dinnima (what.sg.thing ~ what.thing-pl) for Dagbani and (ŋma ~bilabi (who.sg ~ who-pl), nilan ~ bilabi (what.sg ~what-pl), ba ~ ba (what.sg.thing ~ what.thing-pl) for Likpakpaanl. Because the root may differ or be the same from that of the plural as evident in both languages, we propose that number marking in these interrogative words exhibit both suppletive and nonsuppletive patterns. The data are based on native introspection of the authors who are native speakers of these languages. This paper is important because of its empirical and theoretical contribution to the study of the Mabia languages.
 

Семиотическая природа языковой неоднозначности в немецкоязычном поэтическом дискурсе ХХI в.

The article deals with the problem of the phenomenon of linguistic ambiguity and methods of its resolution in the context of modern German poetic texts, as well as possible communication failures associated with differences in the sociocultural characteristics of the author and recipient. In particular, there are illustrations of ambiguity of the entire poem, when the analyzed concept has a dualistic origin and certain linguo-stylistic means; lexical ambiguity, which main mechanisms are a language game, polysemantic words, chains of key lexical items, allusions; syntactic ambiguity, that is realized through special punctuation and two-way communication, that allowed two different interpretations of the sentence. In addition, the German poetic text is characterized by temporary and permanent types of ambiguity.
 As part of the study, it was found that the phenomenon of ambiguity can be resolved due to contextual peculiarities, and situations of communicative failure can be avoided by an increase of the level of linguistic and intercultural competence.