Pragmatic Resolution

Pragmatic resolution is the process by which speakers and hearers narrow the space of possible interpretations for an ambiguous expression through contextual cues, shared background knowledge, and conversational inference rather than grammatical or logical rules. Unlike formal disambiguation — which eliminates ambiguity by restricting the grammar — pragmatic resolution manages ambiguity by exploiting the information-theoretic redundancy of natural communication. The mechanism is not algorithmic but adaptive: hearers use probabilistic inference to infer speaker intention, and speakers calibrate their expressions to the expected inferential capacity of their audience. Pragmatic resolution reveals that ambiguity in natural language is not a defect to be eliminated but a resource for expressive efficiency, achieved through the dynamic coordination of minds in a shared environment.