Semantic underspecification is an essential and pervasive property of natural language. This monograph provides a comprehensive survey of the various phenomena in the field of ambiguity and vagueness. The book discusses the major theories of semantic indefiniteness, which have been proposed in linguistics, philosophy and computer science. It argues for a view of indefiniteness as the potential for further contextual specification, and proposes a unified logical treatment of indefiniteness on this basis. The inherent inconsistency of natural language induced by irreducible imprecision is...

Semantic underspecification is an essential and pervasive property of natural language. This monograph provides a comprehensive survey of the various phenomena in the field of ambiguity and vagueness. The book discusses the major theories of semantic indefiniteness, which have been proposed in linguistics, philosophy and computer science. It argues for a view of indefiniteness as the potential for further contextual specification, and proposes a unified logical treatment of indefiniteness on this basis. The inherent inconsistency of natural language induced by irreducible imprecision is...

In der aktuellen Forschung wird zunehmend deutlich, da fur "intelligente Systeme" die Fahigkeit, naturliche Sprachen zu verstehen, entscheidend ist und da die theoretische Grundlegung eine wesentliche Voraussetzung fur das maschinelle Sprachverstehen darstellt. In dem Band werden vor allem die grammatikalischen und mathematischen Grundlagen der Sprachverstehenssysteme behandelt. Auerdem werden auch kommunikationstheoretische und psycholinguistische Aspekte der Computersimulation angesprochen und die praktische Umsetzung theoretischer Resultate in Form von Grammatik-Werkzeugen. Das Buch soll...