Lexical ambiguity studies explore the human ability to comprehend words with multiple meanings, known as ambiguous words. These studies have revealed that people can quickly and efficiently access the intended meaning of ambiguous words based on contextual cues. For example, in the sentence “The bank is on the river,” the word “bank” could refer to a financial institution or the edge of the river. However, people can usually determine the correct meaning based on the surrounding words.
Understanding lexical ambiguity is crucial for effective communication and language comprehension. It allows us to interpret the intended meaning of words in different contexts and avoid misunderstandings. Lexical ambiguity studies have practical applications in fields such as natural language processing, machine translation, and information retrieval.
