Essential Ambiguity: The Role of Context in Natural-language Processing
Barbara J. Grosz · 1995
Communication in natural languages depends on the use of contextual in-formation to elaborate what has been literally said, removing ambiguity and further specifying content. In The Lives of a Cell, Lewis Thomas [Lewis1974, p. 94] wrote that "[a]mbiguity seems to be an essential, indispensable ele-ment for the transfer of information from one place to another by words, where matters of real importance are concerned. " In their initial introduc-tion to situation theory, Barwise and Perry [Barwise and Perry1983, p. 32] emphasize another facet of this property of language: "But what is impor-tant, after all, is the fact that expressions, whether simple or complex, can be recycled, can be used over and over again in different ways, places, and times and by different people, to say different things. This is what we mean by the efficiency of language." This essential and powerful feature of natural languages has presented one of the major challenges to natural-language processing research. It is well known that context is important at every level of analysis, from interpre-