On Fri, February 4, 2011 8:48, John F. Sowa said:
> Chris,
>
> The syntactic distinction is even looser than any semantic
> criteria for distinguishing objects and processes.
>
> CP
>> The syntactic difference between nouns and verbs is, of course, easier
>> to
>> make - and might be the root for folk intuitions about objects and
>> events. (01)
> On the contrary, when considered on a human time scale for many common
> purposes, the folk semantic distinctions are not bad for a large
> number of things called objects and events. (02)
> That semantic distinction is the origin of the syntactic distinction,
> but many languages allow nouns and verbs to be converted to one another
> by various means. (03)
But note that such conversions come with a change of meaning. (04)
> In English, almost any word can be verbed. There was a Calvin & Hobbs
> cartoon, in which Calvin said "Verbing weirds language." (05)
The two forms of "to verb" here mean "to use as a verb" or "to convert
into the form of a verb". This refers to a sentient agent performing
an action -- quite a different meaning from the noun. To "weird" means
to make something become weird -- again a different meaning from the
the adjective "weird". (06)
> Latin is more restrictive, and some ending is necessary, such
> as "verbify". Greek also requires a suffix, such as "verbize". (07)
Both with different meanings from the noun. (08)
> Nominalization in English can often be done by putting an article
> in front of a verb: take a look, take a walk, give a kick. (09)
Here, the meanings of the nouns are much closer to the meanings of
the verbs which were nouned. The verb form has a meaning similar
to a predicate: (kick John1 Ball2) whereas the noun form treats the
event as an object which has various properties:
(and
(isa Kick1 Kick)
(performedBy Kick1 John1)
(objectActedOn Kick1 Ball2)) (010)
> In classical Greek, Aristotle formed nouns just by putting
> a definite article in front of any word, but Latin requires
> a suffix at the end. Cicero, for example, coined the following
> Latin words by translating Aristotle's Greek:
>
> the how much -> quantitas
>
> the what kind -> qualitas
>
> In fact, Cicero apologized for coining such barbarous terms, but
> he said that they were necessary for philosophical discussions.
> The medieval Scholastics translated all of Aristotle to Latin,
> and most of the new words they coined ended up in the modern
> European languages.
>
> In summary, I would have no objection to using the labels
> PhysObject and Process (or Continuant and Occurrent) in an
> ontology for a specific purpose. But I would not consider
> them mutually exclusive in a general-purpose ontology. (011)
A good borderline example would be a hurricane. As an object,
it can be considered to be moving along a track, but as a
process, it can be considered to have temporal parts (such as
landfall) and subevents. (012)
-- doug f (013)
> John (014)
=============================================================
doug foxvog doug@xxxxxxxxxx http://ProgressiveAustin.org (015)
"I speak as an American to the leaders of my own nation. The great
initiative in this war is ours. The initiative to stop it must be ours."
- Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.
============================================================= (016)
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