First, and least important. Every natural language was first spoken and
then the speech patterns were later organized into a grammar and
(typically) an orthography. And for the most part, that organization
became useful in each language when written communication became
critical to governance and business. When you cannot ask and sign and
otherwise dynamically clarify a point with the communicating partner
face-to-face, it becomes important that what is written is clearly
understood. And grammar rules and orthographic rules improve the
probability. Language continues to evolve, even after we have
formalized writing, but writing has clearly affected the speed of
language evolution. (01)
Furthermore, the ability to write the language correctly is not the same
thing as having a gift for expressing exactly what you meant, no more
and no less. If being erudite in the German language, you can't read
Kant in German, it might be that he just wasn't that good at expressing
his true intent. Or it just might be that he intended the language to
express a set of concepts in an assumed context of understanding, and
you're trying to parse that in a somewhat different context with your
own biases. (Several of my companion tourists were mystified by the
sign on Ben Franklin's offices in Philadelphia, which read "To Let", and
his 18th century colleagues would have found a sign reading "For Rent"
to be equally strange -- why else would one engage in business?) (02)
At the other end, there are many examples of deliberately fuzzy or
misleading speech that are carefully crafted using the rules and idioms
of the language. That covers treaties and other legal documents, double
entendres and Delphic pronouncements. (Every Latin scholar is familiar
with the bizarre use of the accusative for the subject of an infinitive,
and that gives rise to the famous: Ajo te Ajacem Romanos vincere, in
which it is clear that one of Ajax and the Romans will conquer the
other, but intentionally not clear which is the subject and which the
object. But then English uses the genitive for the subject of a gerund
("his going to work"), so there is no high ground here.) (03)
I don't really find German any weirder than English and French, and both
are rather more like modern English than Latin, Greek and Russian
(benefits? of a Jesuit education). But each has a different "feel", and
precision and ambiguity in different areas. I am told that in Swahili
there are 22 different verbs for "walking", because of the differences
in body motions and strength and agility and endurance requirements for
different terrain and different kinds of burdens, which makes all
Western European languages horribly sloppy in that area. (04)
Now to the important issue: Stavros' topic needs a different subject
header. He's right. The issue he raises is an interesting ontological
problem in which our grounding in natural language doesn't help much.
This is a "non-biological example" of exactly the kind of thing that
causes biologists to have an aversion to formal logic taxonomies. Their
scientific divisions usually begin: "If we consider the subject from the
XXX point-of-view then we can divide the category as follows..." The
driving concern is to identify similarities and differences in
particular regards, not to insist that those regards, or the viewpoint
in which they are significant, is necessarily paramount. (05)
Best regards, and wishes for a happy and successful New Year to all. (06)
-Ed (07)
Stavros Macrakis wrote: (08)
> Let me try to save this discussion from utter triviality.
>
> Lakoff has pointed out the centrality of metaphor, analogy, and graded
> categories in natural language, contrasting them with the property-based
> strict categories of Aristotle. The female biological and genetic parent
> who lives with and cares for a child, is its legal parent, and is married to
> and lives with and its biological and genetic father is certainly a "mother"
> in every traditional way, but how do we deal with cases like adoptive
> mothers (cares for but not biological), foster mothers (cares for but not
> legal parent), lesbian co-mothers (one of whom may or may not be a genetic
> or biological parent), surrogate mothers (biological but not genetic), egg
> donors (why don't we use the word "mother" here?), stepmothers (married to
> father), birth mothers (biological but doesn't care for or live with),
> transgendered adoptive mother (not genetically female), etc.? The
> intersection of the properties of these different kinds of "mother" is
> empty.
>
> How to treat these in an ontology?
>
> -- with exceptions? "A foster mother is a mother except that ...."
> -- with limited analogy? "A foster mother is like a generic mother in that X
> and Y are true"
> -- as arbitrary names for otherwise arbitrary categories? "A foster-mother
> is like a mother because she happens to share some properties with a mother
> (just as a father shares some properties with a mother), but also shares the
> substring 'mother' in the category name."
> -- with graded membership? "A foster mother is 50% mother." (not clear what
> sort of reasoning you can do on this...)
>
> And how do you characterize the modifier "foster" or "step" or "adoptive"?
>
> -s
>
>
>
> ------------------------------------------------------------------------
>
>
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> (09)
--
Edward J. Barkmeyer Email: edbark@xxxxxxxx
National Institute of Standards & Technology
Manufacturing Systems Integration Division
100 Bureau Drive, Stop 8263 Tel: +1 301-975-3528
Gaithersburg, MD 20899-8263 FAX: +1 301-975-4694 (010)
"The opinions expressed above do not reflect consensus of NIST,
and have not been reviewed by any Government authority." (011)
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