John,
Big thanks for the materials.
Reading some of the articles, could not stop wondering how people try to
manipulate the natural process of semantic change, specializing,
generalizing, and what else, mostly guided by restricted attitudes, expert
knowledge, and special world views (professionals), or wordly pragmatic
interests and intentions and aims (trade folks). Some comments below. (01)
JS: For anyone who would like to see what linguists of various persuasions
are saying about semantics, following is a list of papers and PhD
dissertations on semantics that are available for free download:
> http://semanticsarchive.net/sem-bin/browse.pl (02)
AA; Here the clear case of overspecializing the meaning of meaning.
[Semantics is the study of meaning, establishing a relationship between
well-formed sentences and the world. In contemporary linguistics, it has
generally taken the form of a theory of truth, which borrows its technical
tools from mathematical logic...A syntactically well-formed
sentence...allows to determine a truth value, etc]
First, Semantics is the study of meaning, establishing a relationship
between sings (and symbols) and the world.
Second, to assume that meaning is a truth condition (Frege) is pushing only
one particular view. There are many others: meaning is an intention or
thought; operation or measurement; information; content; reference, etc.
Third, from Syntactical Well-Formedness (being syntactically meaningful in
some symbolism) to truth value is a long distance, Meaningfulness (assigning
and analyzing meaning), then Testability and Testing, and only after
Assigning Truth Value. Besides, all semantic theory is here reduced
compositional semantics, leaving aside the whole as the context. As a
result, the title of the article sounds too general, while the content is
too specific. (03)
JS: The following article raises a fundamental issue for ontology: do
'Cheeto' and other trademarked terms refer to a natural kind
or an unnatural kind?
http://semanticsarchive.net/Archive/DU2ZmMwN/copyright.pdf
It is really funny to read. But most statements are just misleading: the
hypothesis of "unnatural kinds" without defining what are natural kinds, the
idea that "the name-kind mapping should be one-one", and the exaggerated
distinction between NL semantics and AL semantics. (04)
AA: About the semantics of trademarks and logos, nothing special with them
as far as they are symbols, conventional notations or images. Here the issue
lies more in pragmatics, not in the semantics. All trade folks tend to
generalize the value of their commercial products, pieces and bits of human
social reality. Say, Coca cola people, brainwash us all for one material
purpose, to think that Coke is whatever drinkable and potable and vice
versa, whatever is beverage is Coke, whereas a long chain of classes here,
cola, soft drink, and drink, or beverage. The pragmatic trick of commercial
propaganda consists in false generalizing the extension (and quality) of
their special products to the maximum level possible. (05)
JS: This list of articles illustrates the wide range of issues and the
unlikelihood that anyone is going to develop a unified universal ontology
that can address all of them simultaneously. (06)
AA: This is an ideal ontology, as you mentioned once, a unique kind of
infinite theory, total and all-embracing. But we must be fundamental and
pragmatic, pragmatic and fundamental. Never losing a great tendency of human
intelligence to integrate things, to generalize instances, to build as high
abstractions of reality as possible, even allowing that the human mind is
never to attain such a beautiful intellectual ideal. But still we are able
to develop ontology and semantic standards for science, technology and
industry, to make our human world maximally intelligent.
Azamat Abdoullaev (07)
----- Original Message -----
From: "John F. Sowa" <sowa@xxxxxxxxxxx>
To: "[ontolog-forum]" <ontolog-forum@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>
Sent: Sunday, May 17, 2009 7:45 AM
Subject: [ontolog-forum] Semantics of Natural Languages (08)
> Many of the discussions in this forum have addressed issues related to
> the differences between formal ontologies and the semantics of natural
> languages. For anyone who would like to see what linguists of various
> persuasions are saying about semantics, following is a list of papers
> and PhD dissertations on semantics that are available for free download:
>
> http://semanticsarchive.net/sem-bin/browse.pl (09)
>
> This list is in reverse chronological order from 2009 to 2000.
>
> Most of the papers address very narrow and detailed issues, but some of
> them are more general. For a survey of formal semantics written as
> an encyclopedia article, see
>
> http://schlenke.free.fr/Semantics.pdf
>
> I have very serious doubts about any treatment of NL semantics that
> does not come to grips with the issues raised by Wittgenstein's later
> philosophy, but this article is a reasonable summary of what formal
> linguists are doing.
>
> Following is an article that addresses issues of context:
>
> http://semanticsarchive.net/Archive/jVhNzFiM/QPRS.pdf
>
> The following article raises a fundamental issue for ontology:
> do 'Cheeto' and other trademarked terms refer to a natural kind
> or an unnatural kind?
>
> http://semanticsarchive.net/Archive/DU2ZmMwN/copyright.pdf
>
> This list of articles illustrates the wide range of issues and
> the unlikelihood that anyone is going to develop a unified
> universal ontology that can address all of them simultaneously.
>
> John Sowa
>
>
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