Pragmatics ambiguity in natural language processing, types of ambiguities in nlp, define pragmatic ambiguity, what is pragmatic ambiguity? difference between semantics and pragmatics, examples for pragmatics ambiguity

Pragmatic ambiguity

Pragmatics focuses on conversational implicature. Conversational implicature is a process in which the speaker implies and a listener infers. Simply, it is a study about the sentences that are not directly spoken. It is the study of how people use language.

The pragmatic level of linguistic processing deals with the use of real-world knowledge and understanding how this impacts the meaning of what is being communicated. By analyzing the contextual dimension of the documents and queries, a more detailed representation is derived.

Pragmatic ambiguity arises when the statement is not specific, and the context does not provide the information needed to clarify the statement (Walton D. (1996) A Pragmatic Synthesis. In: Fallacies Arising from Ambiguity. Applied Logic Series, vol 1. Springer, Dordrecht).

Roughly, a pragmatic ambiguity occurs in a requirement if different readers give different interpretations to it, depending on the context of the requirement. The context of a requirement includes the other requirements of the same document, which influence the understanding of the requirement, and the background knowledge of the reader, which gives a meaning to the concepts expressed in the requirement.

Example:

*Sentence*	*Direct meaning (semantic meaning)*	*Other meanings* *(pragmatic meanings)*
Do you know what time is it?	Asking for the current time	Expressing anger to someone who missed the due time or something `
Will you crack open the door? I am getting hot	To break	Open the door just a little
The chicken is ready to eat	The chicken is ready to eat its breakfast, for example.	The cooked chicken is ready to be served

Difference between semantics and pragmatics

Semantics is about literal meaning of the words and their interrelations, whereas pragmatics focuses on the inferred meaning that the speakers and listeners perceive.
Semantics is the study of meaning, or more precisely, the study of the relation between linguistic expressions and their meanings. Pragmatics is the study of context, or more precisely, a study of the way context can influence our understanding of linguistic utterances.