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International Workshop on Controlled Natural Language

CNL 2010: Controlled Natural Language pp 21–42Cite as

Controlling Ambiguities in Legislative Language

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Part of the book series: Lecture Notes in Computer Science ((LNAI,volume 7175))

Abstract

Legislative language exhibits some characteristics typical of languages of administration that are particularly prone to eliciting ambiguities. However, ambiguity is generally undesirable in legislative texts and can pose problems for the interpretation and application of codified law. In this paper, we demonstrate how methods of controlled natural languages can be applied to prevent ambiguities in legislative texts. We investigate what types of ambiguities are frequent in legislative language and therefore important to control, and we examine which ambiguities are already controlled by existing drafting guidelines. For those not covered by the guidelines, we propose additional control mechanisms. Wherever possible, the devised mechanisms reflect existing conventions and frequency distributions and exploit domain-specific means to make ambiguities explicit.

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Author information

Authors and Affiliations

  1. Institute of Computational Linguistics, University of Zurich, Switzerland

    Alexandra Bünzli & Stefan Höfler

Authors
  1. Alexandra Bünzli
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  2. Stefan Höfler
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Editor information

Editors and Affiliations

  1. Dept. of Intelligent Computer Systems, University of Malta, Msida, Malta

    Michael Rosner

  2. Department of Informatics & Institute of Computational Linguistics, University of Zurich, Zurich, Switzerland

    Norbert E. Fuchs

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Bünzli, A., Höfler, S. (2012). Controlling Ambiguities in Legislative Language. In: Rosner, M., Fuchs, N.E. (eds) Controlled Natural Language. CNL 2010. Lecture Notes in Computer Science(), vol 7175. Springer, Berlin, Heidelberg. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-642-31175-8_2

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-642-31175-8_2

  • Publisher Name: Springer, Berlin, Heidelberg

  • Print ISBN: 978-3-642-31174-1

  • Online ISBN: 978-3-642-31175-8

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