Semantic Modeling for Data

Chapter 3. Semantic and Linguistic Phenomena

Do you wish me a good morning, or mean that it is a good morning whether I want it or not; or that you feel good this morning; or that it is a morning to be good on?

J.R.R. Tolkien, The Hobbit, or There and Back Again

Many of the semantic modeling pitfalls and dilemmas that we’ll see in this book are related to certain semantic and linguistic phenomena that characterize human language and thinking, such as ambiguity, vagueness, and semantic change. Understanding the exact nature and characteristics of these phenomena, as well as their role and impact in the development and application of a semantic model, is the first step toward understanding these pitfalls and dilemmas, and finding ways to tackle them. This chapter is about helping you make this first step.

Ambiguity

Ambiguity is the situation that arises when a piece of information can be interpreted in more than one plausible way. For example, if I told you that “I was born in Tripoli,” and you knew nothing else about me, then you could not possibly determine whether “Tripoli” refers to the capital of Libya [42], the city of Tripoli in Lebanon [43], or the capital of Arcadia in Greece [44].

In general, in human language and communication, we observe the following types of ambiguity:

Phonological ambiguity

This ambiguity arises when there is more than one way to compose a set of sounds into words. For example, “ice cream” and “I scream” sound more or less the same.

Syntactic ...