A mixture approach to vagueness and ambiguity

PLoS One. 2013 May 7;8(5):e63507. doi: 10.1371/journal.pone.0063507. Print 2013.

Abstract

When asked to indicate which items from a set of candidates belong to a particular natural language category inter-individual differences occur: Individuals disagree which items should be considered category members. The premise of this paper is that these inter-individual differences in semantic categorization reflect both ambiguity and vagueness. Categorization differences are said to be due to ambiguity when individuals employ different criteria for categorization. For instance, individuals may disagree whether hiking or darts is the better example of sports because they emphasize respectively whether an activity is strenuous and whether rules apply. Categorization differences are said to be due to vagueness when individuals employ different cut-offs for separating members from non-members. For instance, the decision to include hiking in the sports category or not, may hinge on how strenuous different individuals require sports to be. This claim is supported by the application of a mixture model to categorization data for eight natural language categories. The mixture model can identify latent groups of categorizers who regard different items likely category members (i.e., ambiguity) with categorizers within each of the groups differing in their propensity to provide membership responses (i.e., vagueness). The identified subgroups are shown to emphasize different sets of category attributes when making their categorization decisions.

Publication types

  • Research Support, Non-U.S. Gov't

MeSH terms

  • Bayes Theorem
  • Humans
  • Models, Theoretical*
  • Principal Component Analysis
  • Regression Analysis
  • Semantics*
  • Sports

Grants and funding

This work was supported by the Research Foundation-Flanders (www.fwo.be) in the form of a postdoctoral fellowship awarded to the first author. The funders had no role in study design, data collection and analysis, decision to publish, or preparation of the manuscript.