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 investigated, and treated in terms of a dynamic extension of the proposed logic. The book is an extended edition of a German monograph and is addressed to advanced students and researchers in theoretical and computational linguistics, logic, philosophy of language, and NL- oriented AI. Although it makes extensive use of logical formalisms, it requires only some basic familiarity with standard predicate logic concepts since all technical terms are carefully explained.

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 investigated, and treated in terms of a dynamic extension of the proposed logic. The book is an extended edition of a German monograph and is addressed to advanced students and researchers in theoretical and computational linguistics, logic, philosophy of language, and NL- oriented AI. Although it makes extensive use of logical formalisms, it requires only some basic familiarity with standard predicate logic concepts since all technical terms are carefully explained.

In der aktuellen Forschung wird zunehmend deutlich, dass fur "intelligente Systeme" die Fahigkeit, naturliche Sprachen zu verstehen, entscheidend ist und dass 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. Ausserdem werden auch kommunikationstheoretische und psycholinguistische Aspekte der Computersimulation angesprochen und die praktische Umsetzung theoretischer Resultate in Form von Grammatik-Werkzeugen. Das Buch soll die Aufmerksamkeit auf die theoretischen Aspekte der Computerlinguistik lenken und damit im deutschen Sprachraum eine Entwicklung fordern, die in der amerikanischen Wissenschaft schon vor einigen Jahren eingesetzt hat.