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Derek Ross (talk | contribs) m Correct is not a good characterisation of answers in normal speech; helpful or unhelpful is better |
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; [[Syntactic ambiguity]] : The [[grammar]] for [[natural language]]s is not [[unambiguous grammar|unambiguous]], i.e. there are often multiple possible parse trees for a given sentence. Choosing the most appropriate one usually requires [[semantics|semantic]] and contextual information.
; [[Speech acts]] and plans : Sentences often don't mean what they literally say; for instance a good answer to "Can you pass the salt" is to pass the salt; in most contexts "Yes" is not a good answer, although "No" is better and "I'm afraid that I can't see it" is better yet. Or again, if a class was not offered last year, "The class was not offered last year" is a better answer to the question "How many students failed the class last year?" than "None" is.
See also:
* the fictional [[universal translator]]
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