Can Rules of Inferences Resolve Coordination Ambiguity in Natural Language Requirements Specification?

Coordination ambiguity is the ambiguity that occurs from the use of coordinators such as and and or. The first author’s previous work tried to resolve coordination ambiguity in natural language (NL) requirements specifications (RSs) by using language patterns derived from rules of logic (RLs). However, a reevaluation of the language patterns show that RLs cannot fully resolve coordination ambiguity in a RS because the coordinators are not always truth functional, due to incompatible interpretations that a human ascribes to the ambiguous RS. Furthermore, human perceptions in the interpretation of the coordinators in a RS vary incredibly widely. The implications of this observation on requirements elicitation are discussed.