Eckhard Bick - VISL

3
Morphosyntactic disambiguation:
The holographic picture
3.1 The problem of ambiguity: A pragmatic approach
3.1.1 Relevant ambiguity
Handling and resolving ambiguity is the central mechanism in the Constraint
Grammar formalism. So, in a way, it seems reasonable to assume that which types of
ambiguity are specified will condition the kind (and quality) of the grammatical
description to be achieved. In a modular, level based, parsing approach, it makes
sense to classify ambiguities according to the morphological, syntactic, semantic
(and possibly, pragmatic) levels, and then to address the problem of ambiguity with
similar tools at ever higher levels, while exploiting different levels and increasing
amounts of lexical and contextual information. In this process, any advance in
disambiguation on one level would improve the informational leverage for the next
level.
In this vein of layered analyses, homonymy can be defined as morphological
ambiguity, involving (1) free morphemes (lexical ambiguity), (2) bound morphemes
(inflexional ambiguity), or (3) both (lexico-inflexional ambiguity).
(1a) lexical (base)
(free morphemes)
different base forms, same categories
- foi "ir" V PS 3S ('he went')
-foi "ser" V PS 3S ('he was')
(1b) lexical (PoS)
same base form,
difference in category
inventory and -type
- complementar V
('to flatter')
- complementar ADJ
('complementary')
(1c) lexical (paradigm)
same base form,
difference in one or
more lexeme
categories
- guarda F'
('guard' [group])
- guarda M'
Morphological
ambiguity
(homonymy)
- 99 -
(2) inflexional
(bound morphemes)
same base form,
difference in one or
more word form
categories
- amamos PR 1P
- amamos PS 1P
(3) lexico-inflexional
(free/bound
morphemes)
different base forms,
difference in lexeme-
AND word form
categories
- busca N F S
('search')
- busca V PR 3S
('he searches')