Do Pre-Trained Language Models Detect and Understand Semantic
  Underspecification? Ask the DUST!
Frank Wildenburg Michael Hanna Sandro Pezzelle
In everyday language use, speakers frequently utter and interpret sentences
that are semantically underspecified, namely, whose content is insufficient to
fully convey their message or interpret them univocally. For example, to
interpret the underspecified sentence "Don't spend too much", which leaves
implicit what (not) to spend, additional linguistic context or outside
knowledge is needed. In this work, we propose a novel Dataset of semantically
Underspecified Sentences grouped by Type (DUST) and use it to study whether
pre-trained language models (LMs) correctly identify and interpret
underspecified sentences. We find that newer LMs are reasonably able to
identify underspecified sentences when explicitly prompted. However,
interpreting them correctly is much harder for any LMs. Our experiments show
that when interpreting underspecified sentences, LMs exhibit little
uncertainty, contrary to what theoretical accounts of underspecification would
predict. Overall, our study reveals limitations in current models' processing
of sentence semantics and highlights the importance of using naturalistic data
and communicative scenarios when evaluating LMs' language capabilities.