Questions tagged [ambiguity]
Ambiguity refers to words, phrases, or sentences which can be validly understood to mean multiple different things
11
questions
34
votes
6
answers
1k
views
How can syntactic ambiguity with pronouns be avoided?
Due to the way pronouns work in place of any particular noun (subject or object) in the sentence, this often leads to ambiguous grammatical constructions.
Take this phrase in English for example:
...
- 1,003
18
votes
1
answer
395
views
Can you construct garden path sentences in Lojban?
A garden path sentence is a sentence whose beginning suggests one parsing which is invalidated as the whole sentence is read and then re-parsed. Some examples in English (from fun-with-words.com):
...
- 3,760
16
votes
1
answer
212
views
What are some reasons that constructed languages would want to have ambiguity?
As far as I know, most constructed languages have no syntactically or semantically ambiguous grammatical constructions. However, would there be any reasons that a constructed language might include ...
- 1,003
11
votes
1
answer
806
views
List of conlangs whose goal is to minimize ambiguity
Which conlangs have a primary goals of avoiding ambiguity?
I know Lojban had that as a goal (and is in fact syntactically unambiguous), but are there others?
- 227
7
votes
1
answer
229
views
Does Lojban completely remove semantic ambiguity?
As a constructed, syntactically unambiguous language (Wikipedia), does Lojban also completely eliminate semantic ambiguity? If not, what are some examples?
- 1,507
6
votes
2
answers
198
views
Language with contextual-free vocabulary
Every language (I know of) needs a context or a mark of reference for understanding a lot of the expressed message.
I'm refering about concepts like I, you, this, there, tomorrow...
I'd bet there is ...
- 169
5
votes
3
answers
112
views
Should Auxlangs have metaphors?
Auxlangs are meant to be easily learnt/understood by the entire populace of the world, no matter their native language. So, they are constructed to be unambiguous and it's reference should have a one-...
- 61
4
votes
2
answers
180
views
How to create words which will be unambiguously parsable in a conlang?
Right now I am working on this, a list of words to translate into the conlang. At first I started by manually deriving the words from Hebrew/Arabic/Sanskrit/Greek/Latin/English/Spanish, but then found ...
- 1,828
4
votes
1
answer
144
views
How would I make an efficient, written, language while still providing the least ambiguity that is reasonable?
I plan on having some ambiguity for stuff like wordplay (and to make the language feel natural). By efficient, I mean the language takes up little space on the document it is conveying information on.
...
- 143
3
votes
1
answer
451
views
How do you remove the confusion in a conlang when creating and distinguishing nouns, verbs, adjectives, and particles?
I am trying to implement a conlang and am confused how we as humans are able to distinguish nouns, verbs, adjectives, particles, etc. in a sentence. I get that word order is a factor, as well as the ...
- 1,828
2
votes
0
answers
54
views
How much ambiguity for argument roles is possible without sacrificing comprehensibility?
For the purposes of this question, I'm specifically interested in marking theta-roles of verb arguments and possessive constructs, i.e. the things prototypically marked by case in languages that have ...
- 1,735