smudgehetkat

[south harness]

Please be patient

Our volunteers look into many questions every day; sometimes it takes them a little while to answer.

Pro tip: you can rename the thread title with `.tr <thread name>`

Make it descriptive, including relevant context, but also to the point. This way you improve your chances of getting a more relevant and specific answer.

[drifting sorrel]

take for example a sentence like ‘Il a sait que le vol allait être court’, in which the speaker could be referring to either or

[lavish belfry]

In this particular example, you couldn't

if you remove the context from a phrase this ambiguous, it's really hard or even impossible to know which one is meant

BUT that said i would say one might deduce that in this case it's a flight

[sterile hornet]

"Le vol a eu lieu hier"

[lavish belfry]

A short flight makes more sense than a short theft

[lavish belfry]

Here one might deduce it's a theft since we associate this sentence with a crime, a theft. "The flight took place yesterday" can be said but "the theft took place yesterday"? Sounds a lot better (to me at least)

[sterile hornet]

It's largely not an issue to worry about

You'll understand from context

[lavish belfry]

Yes, and even if you can't deduce its meaning it's no biggie, that just means you have to ask for context. This applies to all languages

[lavish belfry]

I would say i might've exaggerated here a bit? When two words are the same with drastically different meanings, you almost always have some clue in your sentence as to which makes more sense

But when you can't deduce the meaning of a word stripped from its context, you're not necessarily expected to just figure it out. It just means the phrase is ambiguous which is not on you

[terse grotto]

With context, I can't think of a time where it would be ambiguous, unless the speaker has the intention to make a wordplay

[terse grotto]

of course if you read this sentence on its own it's ambiguous, but i will be in the middle of a text that will be either about flights or thefts

[sterile hornet]

Yes, so it's not an issue. It's just about context.

[terse grotto]

yeah

[old spire]

I mean, if I were to say, 'I'm lying on my bed' or 'The bat was shiny', you wouldn't think I was speaking lies whilst on the bed nor would you think that a flying bat was shining, right?

[lavish belfry]

Exactly, sometimes the clues are very evident

[drifting sorrel]

It’s just clicked what you mean

the homonyms of ‘bat’ and ‘lie’