A multidisciplinary approach to lexical ambiguity

In this paper, I aim to highlight various perspectives on lexical ambiguity. The structure of the paper is as follows. We define the term word and briefly cover the textbook treatment of the phenomenon of multiple word meanings in section 1. Then we examine how seasoned lexicographers isolate meanings. Section 3 adds the perspective of computational linguistics. Section 4 discusses some relevant issues from cognitive linguistics. Section 5 outlines a neural model that sheds new light on some of the issues tackled in the previous sections. Section 6 introduces a preliminary machine learning experiment in which I aim to cluster meanings automatically for the purposes of the grammar-writing project carried out by the LFGRG research team at the University of Debrecen (Laczkó, Rákosi and Tóth 2010). Finally, section 7 contains my concluding remarks.