Pat C. and John B., (01)
PC>> We are, after all, all grandmasters at the use of our
>> native tongue, and no one else's intuition is going to
>> be superior to our own. (02)
Note the word 'use' in the first clause. Being an expert in
doing or using something does not imply any ability to describe
how one does it. (03)
We are all "grandmasters" in our ability to digest our food.
But that does not imply any ability to describe the process
of digestion -- or to implement it in an artificial digester. (04)
JB> ... first rule of doing linguistic work: don't trust
> what native speakers claim about their own language! (05)
Example: Many native Chinese speakers make two confused,
misleading, and false statements about their own language: (06)
1. Chinese has no grammar. (07)
2. All words are just one syllable long. (08)
Point #1 merely means that Chinese does not have inflections
for plurals, tenses, etc. But it most definitely has a
grammar that is as rich and complex as any other language. (09)
Point #2 merely means that each written character represents
one syllable, and most of those syllables can be used as
stand-alone words. But there is a very large number of
2, 3, and 4-syllable combinations that correspond to single
words in other languages. (010)
PC> I want an ontology that is useful for language *understanding*
> and reasoning, and as a basis for specifying meaning for more
> complex concepts. (011)
The question of how people understand language is very poorly
understood, and there are only two certain claims about computer
understanding: (012)
1. None of the current systems do anything that could be called
"understanding". (013)
2. There is no consensus whatever on how computers could be
designed to understand or what kinds of resources would
be needed to facilitate such understanding. (014)
Given these two points, however, there is a lot of useful
language processing that can be done, some kinds of ontologies
have proved to be useful for those purposes, but the question
of what kind of ontology is a prerequisite for understanding
(assuming anyone could define that term) is not at all clear. (015)
John Sowa (016)
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