An input is ambiguous is multiple, alternative linguistic structures can be built for it

Ambiguity Types

• spoken ambiguity -
• textual ambiguity -
• semantic ambiguity -
• phonetic ambiguity - different words of same sound
• lexical ambiguity -
• morphological ambiguity -
• syntactical ambiguity - when a word has more than one part of speech. leads to structural ambiguity
• structural ambiguity - when a sentence has more than one possible parse tree structures
• semantical ambiguity - when a word/phrase has more than one possible meaning

Spoken Ambiguity

the spoken sentence “I made her duck”, can have phonetic ambiguity

• I sounds like eye
• made sounds like maid

Text Ambiguity

the textual sentence “I made her duck” can have multiple meanings

• I cooked waterfowl for her
• I cooked waterfowl belonging to her
• I created the (plaster?) duck she owns
• I caused her to quickly lower her head or body
• I waved my magic wand and turned her into undifferentiated waterfowl

the words duck and her are morphologically or syntactically ambiguous

• the word her can be a dative pronoun or a possessive pronoun
• the word duck can be a verb or a noun

the word made is:

• syntactically ambiguous:
  • the verb made can be:
    • transitive verb - taking a single direct object
    • ditransitive verb - taking 2 objects (e.g. the first object (her) was transformed into the second object (duck))
  • the word made can take a direct object and a verb (e.g. the object (her) was caused to perform the verb action (duck))
• semantically ambiguous:
  • made can mean create or cook