Kikuyu/Disambiguation

Initial Evaluation of Ambiguity

The initial ambiguity of the corpus is 2211/890 = 2.484.

The major reason this number is so high is that numerous Kikuyu words are genuinely ambiguous, in the sense that which is meant can be determined only by context. One such verb is njĩkĩrire, meaning 'put' (first person singular), which appears to be able to be inflected for the current or remote past with the same form (although it is hard to tell from the data available).

It is possible that some of these forms are not genuine forms of the language, but if so, there is no way to tell from any of the available grammars; the analysis of the language given predicts the existence of these forms. Further investigation of a corpus, preferably with the aid of a speaker, would be necessary to clarify this situation. In particular, there are numerous complications with tense, to the point that it is rare for a form to be analyzed with only one possible tense; this may be a true ambiguity in the language, or an error in the generator, but that is not yet clear.

It is worth noting also that some of these come from over-generation of forms, as the generator still generates a fair number of incorrect forms; due to the complexity of the morphology it has been difficult to eliminate all these errors.