Dear Adrian, (01)
> As mentioned, what our system does is counter-intuitive to folks
> working on dictionaries and grammars. For example, the system would
> happily reason with your phrase
>
> English-as-the-natural-language-spoken-here-and-there-by-lots-of-people
>
>
> How would you go about including that in your natural language
> technology components for natural dialog ? (02)
I am not sure if you are grouping our work among "folks working
on dictionaries and grammars' or not; I suspect the group as you
intend it is probably evaluatively rather than contentfully
defined: what *is* such a group?! :-) In answer to your question: (03)
As a 'new term' the composite 'English-...'
would function in whatever role it is given
in the dialogue, e.g., 'this is an example of English-....' etc.
defines a class relationship for the new term; which can then
of course be used for inference, or trigger clarification
dialogues: "what do you mean by 'english-as- ....' etc... (04)
As a 'compound term', we could try taking it apart, although
nominalizations of this kind are well known (i.e., since the
mid 60s and probably before) to be seriously underspecified in
terms of their internal semantic relationships. In this case, the
function of 'as' as a role-playing would be rather underspecified,
'here-and-there' underspecified but probably a circumstance
of location with respect to the process of speaking, the agent
is at least there (but underspecified with respect to its
really being an agent) in the 'by'-phrase, etc. etc. I.e.,
'how would I go about including it...' : by applying the
usual principles of linguistic intepretation in terms of
semantics and contextualized with respect to the dynamic
discourse context. How else? What makes the entire
enterprise (natural language too) work is the fact that it
is about as far from 'unstructured' as one cares to go! (05)
> perhaps we could focus on whether it does something quite different
> from your research, something that is also useful? (06)
Absolutely. I have no doubt that [your system] does something useful. As
others on this list have written, having friendly glosses
for formal expressions can provide a convenient interface
for many classes of users. My only concern was to make sure
that we don't start confusing language, formal systems and
ontology again... Which was the start-off point for this
digression I think. Putting a formal system in English-looking
like phrases is not really a contribution to formalization
as such, but it might make it accessible in some applications.
It should also not be sold as such in technical
discussions (as I presume we are engaged in here)
as 'using natural English', although that may be fine
in the advertising blurb. (07)
Best,
John B. (08)
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