1. Meaning, Ambiguity and Vagueness

2. Three different types of disputes
A: Mrs. Wilson abuses her children. I saw her spank one of her kids the other day after the kid misbehaved.
B: Don’t be silly. Kids need discipline, and by disciplining her children, Mrs. Wilson is showing that she loves them.
A: I’m afraid that Smiley is guilty of arson. Last night he confided to me that he was the one who set fire to the old schoolhouse.
B: No, you couldn’t be more mistaken. In this country no one is guilty until proven so in a court of law, and Smiley has not yet even been accused of anything.
A: I know that Freddie stole a computer from the old schoolhouse. Barbara told me that she saw Freddie do it.
B: That’s ridiculous! Freddie has never stolen anything in his life. Barbara hates Freddie, and she is trying to pin the theft on him to shield her criminal boyfriend.

3. What is meaning? What is the meaning of a linguistic expression?
Singular expressions (‘박근혜,’ ‘현재 한국의 대통령,’ ‘the Earth,’ ‘Alexander the Great,’ ‘Nirvana’): reference (referent, denotation, 지시(체)) and sense (connotation, 함축)
General nouns (whale, river, people): extension (외연) and intension (내연)
The intension of the expression (and how the world is) determines its extension.
Sentences: extension and intension

4. What is the definition of ‘definition’
A definition is what determines the meaning of a linguistic expression. Usually it is a rule of paraphrase intended to explain meaning. There are two types of definitions.
lexical: explaining current usage
stipulative: specifying your own usage
E.g.: ‘Bachelor’ means unmarried male adult.

5. Test of a lexical definition
To test a lexical definition claiming that A means B, try switching A and B in a variety of sentences. If some resulting pair of sentences don’t mean the same thing, then the definition is incorrect.
E.g.: ‘Lie’ means statement of falsity.
‘거짓말’이란 거짓을 말하는 것이다.

6. Definition of Ambiguity
Ambiguity is, strictly speaking, a property of linguistic expressions. (It is not a property of ideas, thoughts, ways of thinking, claims or people.)
A word, phrase, or sentence is ambiguous if it has more than one meaning.

7. Two Types of Ambiguity Lexical and Structural Lexical Ambiguity:
Nouns: ‘pen,’ ‘suit’,
Verbs: ‘call,’ ‘draw,’
Adjectives: ‘dry,’ ‘hard’
Complex: ‘light,’ ‘bear’

8. A Test for Lexical Ambiguity
One test is having two unrelated antonyms, as with ‘hard,’ which has both ‘soft’ and ‘easy’ as opposites.

9. Structural Ambiguity
‘Our governor opposes taxes which hinder economic growth.’
‘Our governor opposes taxes that hinder economic growth.’
‘Our governor opposes taxes, which hinder economic growth.’
‘The girl hit the boy with a book.’
‘Visiting relatives can be boring.’
For sale: Mixing bowl set designed to please a cook with round bottom for efficient beating

10. Equivocation
When a word or an expression shifts its meaning from one premise to another or from the premises to the conclusion, it commits the fallacy of equivocation.
Xi Jinping is the First Secretary of the Chinese Communist Party. So he must be at least one hundred years old, because the Chinese Communist Party has been in existence for over 90 years.

11. Equivocation Margarine is better than nothing.
Nothing is better than butter.
Therefore margarine is better than butter.
Dr. Salick donated, along with his wife, $4.5 million to Queens College for the center.
Thus, Gloria is tax-deductible.

12. Mr. James signed a contract that reads, “In exchange for painting my house, I promise to pay David $5,000 and give him my new Cadillac only if he finishes the job by May 1.”
David did not finish until May 10.
Therefore, David gets neither the $5,000 nor the Cadillac.

13. Every word is ambiguous.
Chung is a person.
Chung is composed of five letters.
Therefore, there is a person composed of five letters.
To avoid committing such logical errors, philosophers and linguists use single quotes to distinguish use and mention.

14. Where do we need to put single quotes?
George has two children.
‘George’ has six letters.
The Iliad is written in English.
Mark Twain is a pseudonym.
Shakespeare’s real name was Bacon.

15. A policeman has stopped a driver, and after examining his driver’s license, says, “Your license says you need corrective lenses, but you are not wearing your glasses.”
The driver responds, “I’ve got contacts.”
The policeman replies, “I don’t care who you know. You have to wear your glasses.”

16. Type vs Token
Consider the following sentence: “Rose is a rose is a rose is a rose.”
In one sense of ‘word’ we may count three different words; in another sense we may count ten different words. Words in the first sense are called “types” and words in the second sense “tokens”. Types are generally said to be abstract and unique; tokens are concrete particulars, composed of ink, pixels of light (or the suitably circumscribed lack thereof) on a computer screen, electronic strings of dots and dashes, smoke signals, hand signals, sound waves, etc. If a pediatrician asks how many words the toddler has uttered and is told “three hundred”, she might well enquire “word types or word tokens?” because the former answer indicates a prodigy. A headline that reads “From the Andes to Epcot, the Adventures of an 8,000 year old Bean” might elicit “Is that a bean type or a bean token?”
This distinction is important in understanding ambiguity because an expression which is ambiguous as a type is not usually ambiguous as a token. Contexts usually eliminates ambiguity.

17. Vagueness
An expression is vague if it admits of borderline cases. Terms like ‘bald,’ ‘heavy’ and ‘old’ are obvious examples, and their vagueness is explained by the fact that they apply to items on fuzzy regions of a scale.
Some vague words are relative. Heavy people are lighter than non-heavy elephants, and old cats are younger than some young people.

18. This contrast between vagueness and ambiguity is obscured by the fact that most words are both vague and ambiguous. ‘Child’ is ambiguous between ‘offspring’ and ‘immature offspring’. The latter reading of ‘child’ is vague because there are borderline cases of immature offspring. The contrast is further complicated by the fact that most words are also general. For instance, ‘child’ covers both boys and girls.

19. Vagueness precipitates a profound problem: the sorites paradox
Vagueness precipitates a profound problem: the sorites paradox. For instance,
Base step: A one day old human being is a child.
Induction step: If an n day old human being is a child, then that human being is also a child when it is n + 1 days old.
Conclusion: Therefore, a 36,500 day old human being is a child.

20. A grain of wheat does not make a heap.
If a grain of wheat doesn’t make a heap, then neither do two grains of wheat.
If two grains of wheat don’t make a heap, then neither do 3 grains of wheat.
If 999,999 grains of wheat do not make a heap, then neither do 1,000,000 grains of wheat.
Therefore, 1,000,000 grains of wheat do not make a heap.

21. (Premise 1) 1,000,000 grains of wheat is a heap of sand.
(Premise 2) A heap of wheat minus one grain is still a heap.
(Conclusion) A heap may be composed of just one grain of wheat.

22. Vagueness is not just about words
A: Mrs. Wilson abuses her children. And how do I know that? I saw her spank one of her kids the other day after the kid misbehaved.
B: Don’t be silly. Kids need discipline, and by disciplining her children, Mrs. Wilson is showing that she loves them.

23. In this course, students have to do a presentation and an exam or a paper.

24. I can’t bear children.

25. A policeman was guarding every building.

26. He saw that gasoline can explode.

27. Yoko Ono will talk about her husband John Lennon who was killed in an interview with Barbara Walters.

28. Can anyone do this?

29. an old Jane Fonda workout video

30. The prosecutor dropped the case.

31. A man has married 20 women in a small town
A man has married 20 women in a small town. All of the women are still alive and none of them are divorced. The man has broken no laws. Who is the man?

32. No child should work. Every person is a child of someone.
Therefore, no one should work.

33. President Clinton should have been impeached
President Clinton should have been impeached only if he had sexual relations with Monica Lewinsky. He did not have sexual relations with Lewinsky.
Therefore, he should not have been impeached.

34. John Angus Smith, approaching an undercover agent, offered to trade an automatic weapon for cocaine that he planned to sell at a profit. Upon being apprehended, he was charged with numerous firearm and drug trafficking offenses.
Title 18 U.S.C. § 924(c)(1) requires the imposition of specified penalties if the defendant, “during and in relation to drug trafficking crime[,] uses a firearm.” The defendant argued that the firearm was not used "during and in relation to" a drug trafficking crime.
In affirming Smith’s conviction and sentence, the Court of Appeals held that § 924(c)(1)'s plain language imposes no requirement that a firearm be "used" as a weapon, but applies to any use of a gun that facilitates in any manner the commission of a drug offense. Ordinarily, conviction under this statute would result in a prison sentence of five years. However, if the firearm, as in the case, is a machine gun or other automatic weapon the mandatory sentence is 30 years in prison.
He was sentenced 30 years in prison in the Court of Appeals. The judgment of the Court of Appeals is, therefore, right.