A classical AI technique is:
Use global consistency to constrain interpretation of locally ambiguous features.
Suppose we have a sentence such as:
John hit the ball with a bat.How can we determine that ball is a spherical object (not a dance), that hit means to strike (not to arrive at), and that bat is a baseball bat (not a small flying animal)?
John struck the spherical object with a stick.
John arrived at the dance accompanied by a small flying animal.
John arrived at the dance that featured a small flying animal.
John struck the dance with a stick.
...