Prepositional phrases and fixed-arity n-ary
relations
are an integral part of the mKR
language.
You may wish to download the mKE program
from
to explore these ideas.
Here is a brief description of the mKR
representations;
see the web site for more details.
1. prepositional phrases
Optional prepositional phrase lists are used
to
represent the properties of actions.
This
particular example could be written as
either
of the following "propositions".
at time = 20090214Z-5
{
Pat do give =
Giving1234 od Book23 to Mary1256 done;
};
or
at time = 20090214Z-5
{
Mary1256 do
receive = Giving1234 od Book23 from Pat done;
};
"at" specifies the "context" of the enclosed
"sentence",
and may include "space", "time",
"view".
The "sentence" has a "subject" and "action"
separated by
"do", followed by optional prepositional phrases,
terminated
by "done;".
The event name, "Giving1234", is normally omitted, and
is generated
automatically by mKE. The generated
name
is typically of
the form give_1234 or receive_1234.
The preposition "od" specifies the direct object.
The preposition "from" specifies initial
condition,
such as source.
The preposition "to" specifies final
condition,
such as destination.
2. fixed arity n-ary relations
Fixed-arity n-ary relations use a comma-separated
tuple
format. The definition of the relation
includes the
"format" and a context-dependent "meaning".
The meaning
can be an mKR "script" or a Unicon
"procedure".
Here is an example from the genealogy application
of mKE
r_phone is relation with
arraymode=gdbm,arraykey="$1",
label=[pid, phone, fax,
email],
format=[person:1, phone:2, phone:3, email:4],
automatic=ISU,
meaning={$1 has
phone=$2,fax=$3,email=$4;};
begin relation r_phone;
Dick McCullough
1936,209-295-1365,NA,rhm@xxxxxxxxxxxxx;
end relation
r_phone;
----- Original Message -----
Sent: Wednesday, February 11, 2009 12:38
PM
Subject: Re: [ontolog-forum] n-ary vs
binary
Matthew West wrote:
Dear
Rich,
>[MW]
Dear
PatC,
>
>So
is:
>
>Giving1234
-
By
Pat
-
Of
Book23
-
To
Mary1256
-
On
20090214Z-5
>
>So
much harder to cope with?
Generalizing, are you postulating use of a few words (by, of, to,
on, ?), perhaps
exactly
the set of prepositions, as an NLP representation of binary
relationships
to process
sentences?
Aren?t
there cases where the preposition itself has multiple meanings? For
?of?:
The book
of Mark
The Duke
of Windsor
Sort of
like a bird
Lots of
biscuits
A cause of
global warming
These
examples seem to display a diversity of meanings. Why would
your
approach
make it easy to handle these relationships? Similar
concerns
about the
other prepositions would also surface IMHO after analysis.
-Rich
[MW]
I was just being lazy. If I were working this out properly (as we have in ISO
15926) I would have a set of role terms that were properly defined. I was only
trying to make a point about understandability of the binary form, which need
be no harder than an n-ary form if you present it
sensibly.
Regards
Matthew
West
The
?understandability? issue is key here. In a commercial project, the
entire team must have nearly identical understanding of the meaning at
issue. If one uses a preposition ?of? as a link in a database relation,
all members of the team must have the same meaning in mind to be able to use
it. The team won?t have time to philosophize on the words, and they will
almost certainly want to use a previously existing ontology, even if it is
small. So using polysemous prepositions won?t work well in that
ecosystem. Instead, a single sense meaning must be defined for each link
word.
That?s why I don?t
think using binary forms has the same expressive power as the signature, such
as
give( Donor, Thing,
Recipient) where give is essentially monosemous (Sp?).
-Rich
Sincerely,
Rich Cooper
EnglishLogicKernel.com
Rich AT EnglishLogicKernel DOT
com
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