PH wrote:
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Long before Strawson, linguists had observed a distinction between
obligatory and optional (AKA inner and outer) participants in the
action or state expressed by a verb. For 'give', the number of
inner or obligatory participants is 3, and there is an open-ended
number of optional relationships for the time, place, manner, etc.
True, but this distinction is purely grammatical. I have to say
"XX gave YY to ZZ", with all three grammatically required phrases in
place (and Im not obliged similarly to say where or when or how), but Im not
obliged to actually provide the information. I can say 'someone' or 'something'
as a filler which satisfies the grammatical constraint without actually
providing information, when the information is missing. Or I can use the
passive voice and say "Mary was given a book" without saying "by
XX". When sentences like these are converted to logic, the missing arguments
are still missing. Its notable than if one pushes this exercise to the limit,
you find the English words naming the case roles. To describe this event
without mentioning John or the book, we have to say "Mary received a gift"
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This multi-signatured form of the
statement still works with a 3-ary relation:
Mary was given a book” Give(
nil, Mary, book )
^ Earlier( Give(nil, Mary, book) )
Someone gave mary a book Give(
nil, Mary, book )
^ Earlier( Give(nil, Mary, book) )
John gave Mary a book Give(
John, Mary, book )
^ Earlier( Give(John, Mary, book) )
When extra modifiers are present, the form
is still 3-adic with extra predicates recording the event of giving:
Herb gave Mary a book yesterday
Give(
Herb, Mary, book )
^ Earlier( Give(Herb, Mary, book) )
^
TimeOf( Give(Herb, Mary, book), Yesterday )
Pete gave Marsha a book in the library
Give(
Pete, Marsha, book)
^ Earlier( Give(Pete, Marsha, book) )
PlaceOf(
Give(Pete, Marsha, book), Library)
Und so wieder.
The point is that the 3-adic
representations can be used for all the cases you’ve mentioned. Other
information is related to the action of Give( x, y, z ) to describe the
conditions under which the act took place, and the condition of x, y and z at
the time of the act.
A more interesting question is how to be
sure that the sentence translations to logic are 100% consistent with whatever
logical form that was specified, even with the (estimated) forty seven everyday
ways of modulating that fact in sentences.
That is, how do we validate a knowledge
base so that every meaning of each input phrase is properly represented in the
database? Validation, to me, is more important than any
national/international/industrial standardization effort. Standardization
will proceed AFTER database representations of these functions become well
understood, and well validated in practice. A standard without proper
validation is simply a dream that won’t come true.
-Rich