On the Quantum-like Contextuality of Ambiguous Phrases

Daphne Wang; Mehrnoosh Sadrzadeh; Samson Abramsky; Víctor H. Cervantes

On the Quantum-like Contextuality of Ambiguous Phrases

Daphne Wang, Mehrnoosh Sadrzadeh, Samson Abramsky, Víctor H. Cervantes

Psychology

Research output: Chapter in Book/Report/Conference proceeding › Conference contribution

Abstract

Language is contextual as meanings of words are dependent on their contexts. Contextuality is, concomitantly, a well-defined concept in quantum mechanics where it is considered a major resource for quantum computations. We investigate whether natural language exhibits any of the quantum mechanics' contextual features. We show that meaning combinations in ambiguous phrases can be modelled in the sheaf-theoretic framework for quantum contextuality, where they can become possibilistically contextual. Using the framework of Contextuality-by-Default (CbD), we explore the probabilistic variants of these and show that CbD-contextuality is also possible.

Original language	English (US)
Title of host publication	SemSpace 2021 - Workshop on Semantic Spaces at the Intersection of NLP, Physics, and Cognitive Science, Proceedings of the 2021 Workshop
Editors	Martha Lewis, Mehrnoosh Sadrzadeh
Publisher	Association for Computational Linguistics (ACL)
Pages	42-52
Number of pages	11
ISBN (Electronic)	9781954085220
State	Published - 2021
Event	2021 Workshop on Semantic Spaces at the Intersection of NLP, Physics, and Cognitive Science, SemSpace 2021 - Groningen, Netherlands Duration: Jun 16 2021 → …

Conference

Conference	2021 Workshop on Semantic Spaces at the Intersection of NLP, Physics, and Cognitive Science, SemSpace 2021
Country/Territory	Netherlands
City	Groningen
Period	6/16/21 → …

ASJC Scopus subject areas

Computational Theory and Mathematics
Software

Online availability

https://aclanthology.org/2021.semspace-1.5License: CC BY

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Wang, D., Sadrzadeh, M., Abramsky, S., & Cervantes, V. H. (2021). On the Quantum-like Contextuality of Ambiguous Phrases. In M. Lewis, & M. Sadrzadeh (Eds.), SemSpace 2021 - Workshop on Semantic Spaces at the Intersection of NLP, Physics, and Cognitive Science, Proceedings of the 2021 Workshop (pp. 42-52). Association for Computational Linguistics (ACL). https://aclanthology.org/2021.semspace-1.5

On the Quantum-like Contextuality of Ambiguous Phrases. / Wang, Daphne; Sadrzadeh, Mehrnoosh; Abramsky, Samson et al.
SemSpace 2021 - Workshop on Semantic Spaces at the Intersection of NLP, Physics, and Cognitive Science, Proceedings of the 2021 Workshop. ed. / Martha Lewis; Mehrnoosh Sadrzadeh. Association for Computational Linguistics (ACL), 2021. p. 42-52.

Research output: Chapter in Book/Report/Conference proceeding › Conference contribution

Wang, D, Sadrzadeh, M, Abramsky, S & Cervantes, VH 2021, On the Quantum-like Contextuality of Ambiguous Phrases. in M Lewis & M Sadrzadeh (eds), SemSpace 2021 - Workshop on Semantic Spaces at the Intersection of NLP, Physics, and Cognitive Science, Proceedings of the 2021 Workshop. Association for Computational Linguistics (ACL), pp. 42-52, 2021 Workshop on Semantic Spaces at the Intersection of NLP, Physics, and Cognitive Science, SemSpace 2021, Groningen, Netherlands, 6/16/21. <https://aclanthology.org/2021.semspace-1.5>

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AB - Language is contextual as meanings of words are dependent on their contexts. Contextuality is, concomitantly, a well-defined concept in quantum mechanics where it is considered a major resource for quantum computations. We investigate whether natural language exhibits any of the quantum mechanics' contextual features. We show that meaning combinations in ambiguous phrases can be modelled in the sheaf-theoretic framework for quantum contextuality, where they can become possibilistically contextual. Using the framework of Contextuality-by-Default (CbD), we explore the probabilistic variants of these and show that CbD-contextuality is also possible.

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On the Quantum-like Contextuality of Ambiguous Phrases

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