Ntological Domains, Semantic Sorts and Systematic Ambiguity

Abstract This paper is concerned with some aspects of the relationship between ontological knowledge and natural language understanding. More specifically, I will consider how knowledge of ontological domains and knowledge of lexical meaning work together in the interpretation of linguistic expressions. An essential assumption is that in accordance with ontological distinctions there are various semantic sorts which linguistic expressions can be divided. The specific purpose of the paper is to explore how under these conditions the intricate problem of systematic ambiguity can be dealt with. Here the term "systematic ambiguity" stands for the phenomenon that a word or a phrase has several possible meanings which systematically related to one another and from which a suitable meaning can be selected dependently on the linguistic and non-linguistic context of use. Taking into consideration that many predicative expressions impose on their arguments certain sortal selection restrictions. I will deal with the phenomenon that a word or a phrase being systematically ambiguous in some cases adapt itself to the semantic format of the expression it is combined with. Such an adaptation eliminating one or more possible meaning of the word or phrase is in fact a coercion of its semantic sort. I will argue for an approach which takes into account a set of semantic coercion operations to meet sortal constraints. Moreover, I will show how such sort coercions performed in language understanding are sanctioned by world knowledge.