论文标题
语义歧义的因果结构
The Causal Structure of Semantic Ambiguities
论文作者
论文摘要
歧义是一种自然语言现象，发生在不同级别的语法，语义和语用学上。它是广泛研究的；例如，在心理语言学中，我们为人类的歧义过程进行了各种相互竞争的研究。这些研究是经验性的，并且基于眼睛追踪测量。 在这里，我们迈出了为语义歧义形式化这些过程的第一步，在这些过程中，我们确定了两个特征的存在：（1）不同可能解释的联合合理性度，（2）因果结构，根据某些单词在过程中起着更为重要的作用。 Gogioso和Pinzani在QPL 2021中开发的确定因果关系的新型横扫理论模型提供了建模和理由的工具。我们将该理论应用于从心理语言学文献中提取的模棱两可的短语数据集，以及我们使用亚马逊机械Turk Engine收集的人类合理性判断。我们测量了短语中不同歧义顺序的因果分数，并发现了两个突出的顺序：从主题动词中的动词到动词，从对象到动词对象短语中的动词。 我们还发现了延迟歧义多义与同义词动词的歧义的证据，再次与心理语言发现兼容。
Ambiguity is a natural language phenomenon occurring at different levels of syntax, semantics, and pragmatics. It is widely studied; in Psycholinguistics, for instance, we have a variety of competing studies for the human disambiguation processes. These studies are empirical and based on eye-tracking measurements. Here we take first steps towards formalizing these processes for semantic ambiguities where we identified the presence of two features: (1) joint plausibility degrees of different possible interpretations, (2) causal structures according to which certain words play a more substantial role in the processes. The novel sheaf-theoretic model of definite causality developed by Gogioso and Pinzani in QPL 2021 offers tools to model and reason about these features. We applied this theory to a dataset of ambiguous phrases extracted from Psycholinguistics literature and their human plausibility judgements collected by us using the Amazon Mechanical Turk engine. We measured the causal fractions of different disambiguation orders within the phrases and discovered two prominent orders: from subject to verb in the subject-verb and from object to verb in the verb object phrases. We also found evidence for delay in the disambiguation of polysemous vs homonymous verbs, again compatible with Psycholinguistic findings.
