 In re Soper’s Estate illustrates a more general phenomenon of philosophical interest: natural language as a source of contract disputes (Farnsworth 1967). Work in this area aims to characterize and distinguish the ways in which the parties’ linguistic choices can interfere with contractual coordination. Famous contract disputes have involved homonymy (two ships bear the name “Peerless” and the parties do not intend to refer to the same ship: Raffles v. Wichelhaus (1864)), semantic ambiguity (the word “chicken” in the trade has a broader and narrower meaning: Frigaliment Importing v B.N.S (1960)), syntactic ambiguity (an insurance policy covers any “disease of organs of the body not common to both sexes”: Business Men’s Assur. Ass’n v. R (1927)), pragmatic or “latent” ambiguity (In re Soper’s Estate, discussed above); vagueness (parties agree that a “materially adverse change” to the financial health of a business qualifies the buyer’s obligations: In re Carter’s Claim (1957)) and under-specification (parties agree to the sale of “one of the seller’s warehouses”). For a general discussion of how to distinguish these and related phenomena, see the entry on  ambiguity.