Jenny, (01)
There are many caveats, but the following is an advantage
rather than a caveat: (02)
> the same extraction process will provide different results
> over time - ie a snapshot of an evolving process (03)
Just imagine the shift in co-occurrence patterns for 'automobile'
and 'horseless carriage' over the past century, 'transistor' and
'vacuum tube' over the past 50 years, or 'CRT' and 'LCD' over
the past 10. (04)
Such techniques are complementary to formal definitions and axioms.
And I would say that the term 'snapshot' is more appropriate for
the formal definitions: axioms very precisely characterize one
particular definition at one instant in time -- such as 'automobile'
in 1907, which would not be appropriate for 1957 or 2007. (05)
> Goguen... argued instead that if the need for conceptual diversity
> is accepted, it then follows that 'knowledge engineering should
> seek ways to support it, rather than ways to overcome, suppress,
> or subvert it' by providing ‘support for multiple evolving
> ontologies for single domains, accepting that translations among
> such theories will necessarily be partial and incomplete and
> providing tools to help construct such partial mappings'. (06)
I agree with everything in that passage except the word 'if'.
For languages, technology, and people, the absence of change
is death. (07)
The Académie française tried to freeze the French language as it
was in 1635. The result was a large discrepancy between the written
and spoken forms, and it became very difficult for French to adapt,
evolve, and accommodate new developments. There was always a long
lag between any innovation and the appearance of an official term
in the official dictionary. When official terms did appear, they
were ignored by French speakers, who had already coined their own,
usually more colorful and meaningful, terms. (08)
English, on the other hand, was blessed with the absence of any
official authority over the language and with multiple English-
speaking countries that had no desire to yield to a foreign
authority, even if any did exist. As a result, English freely
accepted and borrowed innovations and extensions from every
imaginable source. (09)
I don't believe there is any dispute about which approach has
proved to be the more robust, flexible, and successful. (010)
John (011)
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