Computational Models of Ambiguity Resolution

Abstract

Research on computer programs for understanding natural language can be both a consumer of psycholinguistic research on ambiguity and a contributor to such work. The fields have different ways of thinking, different concerns, and different criteria as to what counts as a result. I will show that, nevertheless, both fields may profit from cooperation, by giving examples from my own work and that of some of my students showing how issues raised or results obtained in one field can be of use in the other. The examples will include computer systems for lexical, structural, and thematic disambiguation that were inspired by recent psycholinguistic work. I will also show computational work on ambiguities of description attribution and other “large ambiguities” that raise, I will argue, interesting problems for psycholinguists.