Ambiguity

"Ambiguous" redirects here. For the film, see Ambiguous (film).

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Sir John Tenniel's illustration of the Caterpillar for Lewis Carroll's Alice's Adventures in Wonderland is noted for
its ambiguous central figure, whose head can be viewed as being a human male's face with a pointed nose and
pointy chin or being the head end of an actual caterpillar, with the first two right "true" legs visible.[1]

Ambiguity is a type of uncertainty of meaning in which several interpretations are plausible. It is

thus an attribute of any idea or statement whose intended meaning cannot be definitively resolved
according to a rule or process with a finite number of steps. (The ambi- part of the term reflects an
idea of "two", as in "two meanings".)
The concept of ambiguity is generally contrasted with vagueness. In ambiguity, specific and distinct
interpretations are permitted (although some may not be immediately obvious), whereas with
information that is vague, it is difficult to form any interpretation at the desired level of specificity.
Context may play a role in resolving ambiguity. For example, the same piece of information may be
ambiguous in one context and unambiguous in another.
 Contents
[hide]

 1Linguistic forms
 2Music
 3Visual art
 4Constructed language
 5Computer science
 6Mathematical notation
o 6.1Names of functions
o 6.2Expressions
o 6.3Examples of potentially confusing ambiguous mathematical expressions
o 6.4Notations in quantum optics and quantum mechanics
o 6.5Ambiguous terms in physics and mathematics
 7Mathematical interpretation of ambiguity
 8See also
 9References
 10External links

Linguistic forms[edit]

Structural analysis of an ambiguous Spanish sentence:

Pepe vio a Pablo enfurecido
Interpretation 1: When Pepe was angry, then he saw Pablo
Interpretation 2: Pepe saw that Pablo was angry.
Here, the syntactic tree in figure represents interpretation 2.

The lexical ambiguity of a word or phrase pertains to its having more than one meaning in the
language to which the word belongs. "Meaning" here refers to whatever should be captured by a
good dictionary. For instance, the word "bank" has several distinct lexical definitions, including
"financial institution" and "edge of a river". Or consider "apothecary". One could say "I bought herbs
from the apothecary". This could mean one actually spoke to the apothecary (pharmacist) or went to
the apothecary (pharmacy).
The context in which an ambiguous word is used often makes it evident which of the meanings is
intended. If, for instance, someone says "I buried $100 in the bank", most people would not think
someone used a shovel to dig in the mud. However, some linguistic contexts do not provide
sufficient information to disambiguate a used word.
Lexical ambiguity can be addressed by algorithmic methods that automatically associate the
appropriate meaning with a word in context, a task referred to as word sense disambiguation.
The use of multi-defined words requires the author or speaker to clarify their context, and sometimes
elaborate on their specific intended meaning (in which case, a less ambiguous term should have
been used). The goal of clear concise communication is that the receiver(s) have no
misunderstanding about what was meant to be conveyed. An exception to this could include a
politician whose "weasel words" and obfuscation are necessary to gain support from
multiple constituents with mutually exclusive conflicting desires from their candidate of choice.
Ambiguity is a powerful tool of political science.
More problematic are words whose senses express closely related concepts. "Good", for example,
can mean "useful" or "functional" (That's a good hammer), "exemplary" (She's a good student),
"pleasing" (This is good soup), "moral" (a good person versus the lesson to be learned from a story),
"righteous", etc. " I have a good daughter" is not clear about which sense is intended. The various
ways to apply prefixes and suffixes can also create ambiguity ("unlockable" can mean "capable of
being unlocked" or "impossible to lock").
Syntactic ambiguity arises when a sentence can have two (or more) different meanings because of
the structure of the sentence—its syntax. This is often due to a modifying expression, such as a
prepositional phrase, the application of which is unclear. "He ate the cookies on the couch", for
example, could mean that he ate those cookies that were on the couch (as opposed to those that
were on the table), or it could mean that he was sitting on the couch when he ate the cookies. "To
get in, you will need an entrance fee of $10 or your voucher and your drivers' license." This could
mean that you need EITHER ten dollars OR BOTH your voucher and your license. Or it could mean
that you need your license AND you need EITHER ten dollars OR a voucher. Only rewriting the
sentence, or placing appropriate punctuation can resolve a syntactic ambiguity.[2] For the notion of,
and theoretic results about, syntactic ambiguity in artificial, formal languages (such as
computer programming languages), see Ambiguous grammar.
Spoken language can contain many more types of ambiguities which are called phonological
ambiguities, where there is more than one way to compose a set of sounds into words. For example,
"ice cream" and "I scream". Such ambiguity is generally resolved according to the context. A
mishearing of such, based on incorrectly resolved ambiguity, is called a mondegreen.
Semantic ambiguity happens when a sentence contains an ambiguous word or phrase—a word or
phrase that has more than one meaning. In "We saw her duck" (example due to Richard Nordquist),
the word "duck" can refer either

1. to the person's bird (the noun "duck", modified by the possessive pronoun "her"), or
2. to a motion she made (the verb "duck", the subject of which is the objective pronoun "her",
object of the verb "saw").[2]
Lexical ambiguity is contrasted with semantic ambiguity. The former represents a choice between a
finite number of known and meaningful context-dependent interpretations. The latter represents a
choice between any number of possible interpretations, none of which may have a standard agreed-
upon meaning. This form of ambiguity is closely related to vagueness.
Linguistic ambiguity can be a problem in law, because the interpretation of written documents and
oral agreements is often of paramount importance.
Philosophers (and other users of logic) spend a lot of time and effort searching for and removing (or
intentionally adding) ambiguity in arguments because it can lead to incorrect conclusions and can be
used to deliberately conceal bad arguments. For example, a politician might say, "I oppose taxes
which hinder economic growth", an example of a glittering generality. Some will think he opposes
taxes in general because they hinder economic growth. Others may think he opposes only those
taxes that he believes will hinder economic growth. In writing, the sentence can be rewritten to
reduce possible misinterpretation, either by adding a comma after "taxes" (to convey the first sense)
or by changing "which" to "that" (to convey the second sense) or by rewriting it in other ways. The
devious politician hopes that each constituent will interpret the statement in the most desirable way,
and think the politician supports everyone's opinion. However, the opposite can also be true – an
opponent can turn a positive statement into a bad one if the speaker uses ambiguity (intentionally or
not). The logical fallacies of amphiboly and equivocation rely heavily on the use of ambiguous words
and phrases.
In continental philosophy (particularly phenomenology and existentialism), there is much greater
tolerance of ambiguity, as it is generally seen as an integral part of the human condition. Martin
Heidegger argued that the relation between the subject and object is ambiguous, as is the relation of
mind and body, and part and whole.[3] In Heidegger's phenomenology, Dasein is always in a
meaningful world, but there is always an underlying background for every instance of signification.
Thus, although some things may be certain, they have little to do with Dasein's sense of care and
existential anxiety, e.g., in the face of death. In calling his work Being and Nothingness an "essay in
phenomenological ontology" Jean-Paul Sartre follows Heidegger in defining the human essence as
ambiguous, or relating fundamentally to such ambiguity. Simone de Beauvoir tries to base an ethics
on Heidegger's and Sartre's writings (The Ethics of Ambiguity), where she highlights the need to
grapple with ambiguity: "as long as philosophers and they [men] have thought, most of them have
tried to mask it...And the ethics which they have proposed to their disciples have always pursued the
same goal. It has been a matter of eliminating the ambiguity by making oneself pure inwardness or
pure externality, by escaping from the sensible world or being engulfed by it, by yielding to eternity or
enclosing oneself in the pure moment." Ethics cannot be based on the authoritative certainty given
by mathematics and logic, or prescribed directly from the empirical findings of science. She states:
"Since we do not succeed in fleeing it, let us, therefore, try to look the truth in the face. Let us try to
assume our fundamental ambiguity. It is in the knowledge of the genuine conditions of our life that
we must draw our strength to live and our reason for acting". Other continental philosophers suggest
that concepts such as life, nature, and sex are ambiguous. Corey Anton has argued that we cannot
be certain what is separate from or unified with something else: language, he asserts, divides what
is not, in fact, separate. Following Ernest Becker, he argues that the desire to 'authoritatively
disambiguate' the world and existence has led to numerous ideologies and historical events such as
genocide. On this basis, he argues that ethics must focus on 'dialectically integrating opposites' and
balancing tension, rather than seeking a priori validation or certainty. Like the existentialists and
phenomenologists, he sees the ambiguity of life as the basis of creativity.
In literature and rhetoric, ambiguity can be a useful tool. Groucho Marx's classic joke depends on a
grammatical ambiguity for its humor, for example: "Last night I shot an elephant in my pajamas. How
he got in my pajamas, I'll never know". Songs and poetry often rely on ambiguous words for artistic
effect, as in the song title "Don't It Make My Brown Eyes Blue" (where "blue" can refer to the color, or
to sadness).
In the narrative, ambiguity can be introduced in several ways: motive, plot, character. F. Scott
Fitzgerald uses the latter type of ambiguity with notable effect in his novel The Great Gatsby.
Christianity and Judaism employ the concept of paradox synonymously with 'ambiguity'. Many
Christians and Jews endorse Rudolf Otto's description of the sacred as 'mysterium tremendum et
fascinans', the awe-inspiring mystery which fascinates humans.[dubious – discuss] The orthodox
Catholic writer G. K. Chesterton regularly employed paradox to tease out the meanings in common
concepts which he found ambiguous or to reveal meaning often overlooked or forgotten in common
phrases. (The title of one of his most famous books, Orthodoxy, itself employing such a paradox.)
Metonymy involves the use of the name of a subcomponent part as an abbreviation, or jargon, for
the name of the whole object (for example "wheels" to refer to a car, or "flowers" to refer to beautiful
offspring, an entire plant, or a collection of blooming plants). In modern vocabulary, critical
semiotics,[9] metonymy encompasses any potentially ambiguous word substitution that is based on
contextual contiguity (located close together), or a function or process that an object performs, such
as "sweet ride" to refer to a nice car. Metonym miscommunication is considered a primary
mechanism of linguistic humor.

Music[edit]
In music, pieces or sections which confound expectations and may be or are interpreted
simultaneously in different ways are ambiguous, such as some polytonality, polymeter, other
ambiguous meters or rhythms, and ambiguous phrasing, or (Stein 2005, p. 79) any aspect of music.
The music of Africa is often purposely ambiguous. To quote Sir Donald Francis Tovey (1935,
p. 195), "Theorists are apt to vex themselves with vain efforts to remove uncertainty just where it has
a high aesthetic value."

Visual art[edit]
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The Necker cube, an ambiguous image

In visual art, certain images are visually ambiguous, such as the Necker cube, which can be
interpreted in two ways. Perceptions of such objects remain stable for a time, then may flip, a
phenomenon called multistable perception. The opposite of such ambiguous images are impossible
objects.
Pictures or photographs may also be ambiguous at the semantic level: the visual image is
unambiguous, but the meaning and narrative may be ambiguous: is a certain facial expression one
of excitement or fear, for instance?

Constructed language[edit]
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 template message)

Some languages have been created with the intention of avoiding ambiguity, especially lexical
ambiguity. Lojban and Loglan are two related languages which have been created for this, focusing
chiefly on syntactic ambiguity as well. The languages can be both spoken and written. These
languages are intended to provide a greater technical precision over big natural languages, although
historically, such attempts at language improvement have been criticized. Languages composed
from many diverse sources contain much ambiguity and inconsistency. The many exceptions
to syntax and semantic rules are time-consuming and difficult to learn.

Computer science[edit]
In computer science, the SI prefixes kilo-, mega- and giga- were historically used in certain contexts
to mean either the first three powers of 1024 (1024, 10242 and 10243) contrary to the metric
system in which these units unambiguously mean one thousand, one million, and one billion. This
usage is particularly prevalent with electronic memory devices (e.g. DRAM) addressed directly by a
binary machine register where a decimal interpretation makes no practical sense.
Subsequently, the Ki, Mi, and Gi prefixes were introduced so that binary prefixes could be written
explicitly, also rendering k, M, and G unambiguous in texts conforming to the new standard — this
led to a new ambiguity in engineering documents lacking outward trace of the binary prefixes
(necessarily indicating the new style) as to whether the usage of k, M, and G remains ambiguous
(old style) or not (new style). Note also that 1 M (where M is ambiguously 1,000,000 or 1,048,576)
is less uncertain than the engineering value 1.0e6 (defined to designate the interval 950,000 to
1,050,000), and that as non-volatile storage devices began to commonly exceed 1 GB in capacity
(where the ambiguity begins to routinely impact the second significant digit), GB and TB almost
always mean 109 and 1012 bytes.

Mathematical notation[edit]
Mathematical notation, widely used in physics and other sciences, avoids many ambiguities
compared to expression in natural language. However, for various reasons,
several lexical, syntactic and semantic ambiguities remain.
Names of functions[edit]
The ambiguity in the style of writing a function should not be confused with a multivalued function,
which can (and should) be defined in a deterministic and unambiguous way. Several special
functions still do not have established notations. Usually, the conversion to another notation requires
to scale the argument or the resulting value; sometimes, the same name of the function is used,
causing confusions. Examples of such underestablished functions:

 Sinc function
 Elliptic integral of the third kind; translating elliptic integral form MAPLE to Mathematica, one
should replace the second argument to its square, see Talk:Elliptic integral#List of notations;
dealing with complex values, this may cause problems.
 Exponential integral[3]
 Hermite polynomial[3]:775
Expressions[edit]
Ambiguous expressions often appear in physical and mathematical texts. It is common practice to
omit multiplication signs in mathematical expressions. Also, it is common to give the same name to a
variable and a function, for example, . Then, if one sees , there is no way to distinguish

whether it means multiplied by , or function evaluated at argument equal to .

In each case of use of such notations, the reader is supposed to be able to perform the deduction
and reveal the true meaning.
Creators of algorithmic languages try to avoid ambiguities. Many algorithmic languages
(C++ and Fortran) require the character * as symbol of multiplication. The Wolfram Languageused
in Mathematica allows the user to omit the multiplication symbol, but requires square brackets to
indicate the argument of a function; square brackets are not allowed for grouping of expressions.
Fortran, in addition, does not allow use of the same name (identifier) for different objects, for
example, function and variable; in particular, the expression f=f(x) is qualified as an error.
The order of operations may depend on the context. In most programming languages, the operations
of division and multiplication have equal priority and are executed from left to right. Until the last

century, many editorials assumed that multiplication is performed first, for example, is

interpreted as ; in this case, the insertion of parentheses is required when translating the
formulas to an algorithmic language. In addition, it is common to write an argument of a function
without parenthesis, which also may lead to ambiguity. Sometimes, one uses italics letters to denote

elementary functions. In the scientific journal style, the expression means product of

variables , , and , although in a slideshow, it may mean .

A comma in subscripts and superscripts sometimes is omitted; it is also ambiguous notation. If it is

written , the reader should guess from the context, does it mean a single-index object,

evaluated while the subscript is equal to product of variables , and , or it is indication

to a trivalent tensor. The writing of instead of may mean that the writer either is stretched
in space (for example, to reduce the publication fees) or aims to increase number of publications
without considering readers. The same may apply to any other use of ambiguous notations.

Subscripts are also used to denote the argument to a function, as in .

Examples of potentially confusing ambiguous mathematical expressions [edit]

, which could be understood to mean either or . In addition, may mean ,

as means (see tetration).

, which by convention means , though it might be thought to mean ,

since means .

, which arguably should mean but would commonly be understood to mean .

Notations in quantum optics and quantum mechanics [edit]

It is common to define the coherent states in quantum optics with and states with fixed number

of photons with . Then, there is an "unwritten rule": the state is coherent if there are more Greek

characters than Latin characters in the argument, and photon state if the Latin characters

dominate. The ambiguity becomes even worse, if is used for the states with certain value of

the coordinate, and means the state with certain value of the momentum, which may be used
in books on quantum mechanics. Such ambiguities easily lead to confusions, especially if some
normalized adimensional, dimensionless variables