This really addresses Bill Burkett's point (01)
Christopher Menzel wrote:
> Burkett, William [USA] wrote:
>
>> Ferenc's statement that he's a linguist is important to understanding
>> his (and my) perspective. I think linguistics has a LOT more to
>> contribute to the field of ontology development than logic does.
>>
>
> Well, of course, that depends on what aspect of ontology development you
> are talking about but if you have in mind the creation of ontologies
> from documents and domain experts (as opposed to the development of
> reasoning and integration mechanisms) I'd probably agree. (02)
I can agree that a knowledge of linguistics, as a discipline, is
important to any effort to produce an ontology by the *automated*
analysis of documents.
But I don't think that a knowledge of lingustics as a discipline
contributes much to construction of a domain ontology by knowledge
engineers interacting with written expositions or domain experts. That
is, the practical ability to make correct interpretations of utterances
doesn't depend on knowledge of linguistics. As someone else on this
exploder just said (and I can't find the email), the correct
interpretation of utterances depends primarily on understanding the
domain, which may reduce to understanding what the same speaker/author
said two paragraphs back. There is some practical knowledge of
linguistics involved, along with practical knowledge of the psychology
of communication. That kind of knowledge involves familiarity with the
ways in which people express themselves, the ability to recognize rants
and preoccupation with irrelevant concerns, the ability to deal with an
expert's inability to abstract, and the ability to find the right
question to elicit the information that fills in the gaps in
comprehension. I still think of those skills as a black art; I don't
know how to teach it; and whatever I have learned in that vein did not
come from my education in languages and linguistics. (03)
I have worked with data modelers, information modelers and ontology
developers for 25 years. All of those who actually do domain analysis
are knowledge engineers. Only a few had any formal background in
linguistics, and their skills were statistically distributed in the same
ways as those with no such formal background. (My wife's standing
observation is that all professionals are like auto mechanics: 20%
understand their trade so well as to deal effectively with unusual
situations; 60% understand it well enough to deal effectively with
common situations; 20% cannot be trusted to change a tire. ;-) My
experience of modelers, however, tends more to 40-40-20.) (04)
> But obviously
> both linguistics and logic are central to the overall vision of
> ontological engineering.
> (05)
Make that "language and logic are central" and I agree completely.
Linguistics as a field involves a great many subdisciplines that are
nearly or totally irrelevant to knowledge engineering. (I have always
been interested in etymologies and grammatical variance, for example,
but I don't see those as being relevant to knowledge engineering, except
in some passing way to automated text analysis.) OTOH, I agree with
Bill and Ferenc and Rich Cooper that there are social, cultural and
psychological concerns involved in knowledge engineering as well, as
much as we mathematicians might want to believe that ontologies are
somehow "pure". (06)
The problem that Chris and I are having with some of what Ferenc writes
is in how he writes it. If we tried to engineer the knowledge contained
in what he writes as we understand those writings, we would get
inconsistencies and disconnections. The details of his position, as of
this writing, are incomprehensible. I have a strong respect for the
Nietzsche practice of making bold contradictory statements to get the
audience out of its comfort zone, but then you have to be as good as
Nietzsche in following that up with a consistent broader understanding
of the terms and a compelling argument for the validity of that
understanding. A compelling argument is logical, even in the field of
linguistics, and it must start from some accepted or acceptable postulates. (07)
-Ed (08)
--
Edward J. Barkmeyer Email: edbark@xxxxxxxx
National Institute of Standards & Technology
Manufacturing Systems Integration Division
100 Bureau Drive, Stop 8263 Tel: +1 301-975-3528
Gaithersburg, MD 20899-8263 FAX: +1 301-975-4694 (09)
"The opinions expressed above do not reflect consensus of NIST,
and have not been reviewed by any Government authority." (010)
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