Grammatical indeterminacy

Empirical differentiation of ambiguity, vagueness and polysemy

Project funding from the Fritz Thyssen Foundation

Start: September 15, 2024;  duration: two years

Indeterminacy is a common phenomenon in natural language, which manifests across all linguistic levels. It not only occurs frequently but also represents a central mechanism in grammatical change, and has a major impact on empirically-based grammatical classifications. However, theoretically sound and empirically robust analyses of grammatical indeterminacy phenomena (including e.g., ambiguity, vagueness, and polysemy) are still desiderata in empirical grammatical research.

The aim of this project is to develop and establish a theoretically sound framework for the empirical analysis of indeterminacy in grammar. Quantitative analyses of grammatical indeterminacy phenomena will be used to test and refine the classification criteria established in semantics.