A method to identify potential ambiguous Malay words through Ambiguity Attributes mapping: An exploratory Study

We describe here a methodology to identify a list of ambiguous Malay words that are commonly being used in Malay documentations such as Requirement Specification. We compiled several relevant and appropriate requirement quality attributes and sentence rules from previous literatures and adopt it to come out with a set of ambiguity attributes that most suit Malay words. The extracted Malay ambiguous words (potential) are then being mapped onto the constructed ambiguity attributes to confirm their vagueness. The list is then verified by Malay linguist experts. This paper aims to identify a list of potential ambiguous words in Malay as an attempt to assist writers to avoid using the vague words while documenting Malay Requirement Specification as well as to any other related Malay documentation. The result of this study is a list of 120 potential ambiguous Malay words that could act as guidelines in writing Malay sentences.