+1 to John's points. (01)
duane (02)
On 1/16/08 11:41 PM, "John F. Sowa" <sowa@xxxxxxxxxxx> wrote: (03)
> Pat,
>
> As I keep saying, I don't think we disagree. I have no quarrel
> with your summary of the kinds of things that have been discussed
> when people use the word 'context'.
>
> PH> A few:
>>
>> 1. The surrounding or preceding text of an occurrence of a word
>> or phrase, which disambiguates its intended meaning. Usually
>> restricted to the immediate sentence.
>>
>> 2. Similarly, but applied to a conversation, and meaning the
>> 'common ground' (mutually agreed beliefs, topics, etc.) of
>> the participants at that point; usually extends well beyond
>> one sentence or utterance.
>>
>> 3. Similar to 2., but rather than common ground, the actual
>> physical setting of the conversation, the 'situation' in which
>> it is taking place
>>
>> 4. A set of assumptions or beliefs providing a temporary focus
>> of reasoning and used to select particular axioms or theories
>> applied to a concept or concepts (aka "microtheory")
>>
>> 5. A linguistic or cultural tradition providing the origin of
>> a text, and which must be taken into account in order to fully
>> extract the intended meaning of the text.
>>
>> 6. Anything which satisfies the axioms of some 'theory of contexts'.
>> This of course depends on the theory: they tend to be very weak
>> theories.
>
> When you list it in that way, it certainly looks like a disorganized
> mess of miscellaneous stuff. It is hard to see any commonality in
> such a list.
>
> But what I have been suggesting is that there is something common to
> all of the above:
>
> 1. Syntax: There is some text -- in a broad sense, which could
> include NL printed stuff, spoken snippets of conversation,
> or some formal set of statements.
>
> 2. Semantics: That text is relevant to something, such as a
> situation, in terms of which the pronouns and incompletely
> specified references are resolved.
>
> 3. Pragmatics: There is some reason or purpose for selecting
> that piece of text and relating it to the situation (or
> whatever else it is being related to). That reason might be
> stated in formal axioms, informal natural language, or left
> unstated in some kind of "common knowledge".
>
> I claim that a framework of this kind is common to all the ways in
> which the word 'context' is normally used.
>
> Since the semantics and pragmatics, as in #2 and #3 above, can
> vary so widely, I agree that it's hard to see any commonalities.
> But I would claim that a framework of this kind is common to
> all the ways in which the word 'context' is used.
>
> And that is what I would use it for: a syntactic package of
> text t, that is relevant to something x for some purpose that
> may be stated in some other text (formal or informal).
>
> John
>
>
>
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