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Re: [ontolog-forum] Fwd: Re: Using controlled natural languages for onto

To: "[ontolog-forum] " <ontolog-forum@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>
From: "Obrst, Leo J." <lobrst@xxxxxxxxx>
Date: Tue, 22 Mar 2011 16:46:51 -0400
Message-id: <0111C34BD897FD41841D60396F2AD3D307AA1D0122@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>
John,    (01)

Response below.    (02)

Leo    (03)

-----Original Message-----
From: ontolog-forum-bounces@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx 
[mailto:ontolog-forum-bounces@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx] On Behalf Of John F. Sowa
Sent: Saturday, March 19, 2011 8:40 PM
To: ontolog-forum@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
Subject: Re: [ontolog-forum] Fwd: Re: Using controlled natural languages for 
ontology    (04)

...    (05)

> JS:
> As late as 1970, Montague claimed that there is no essential
> difference between natural languages and formal languages.
> His version of language had a perfectly Fregean foundation,
> but it was useless for practical NLP.    (06)

Actually Montague semantics enabled a real resurgence in NL semantics that 
continues today. Prior to Montague, NL semantics was mostly based on semantic 
"features" and "markers", and the use of semantic "projection rules" and was 
relatively ad hoc (witness the late-60s "war" between "generative semantics" 
and "interpretive semantics", notions of "Markerese" and "the language of 
thought"). And Montague's work, based on a truth-conditional semantics of NL 
(i.e., model-theoretic semantics) spawned solid extensions that included 
Discourse Representation Theory, File-change semantics, Dynamic semantics, and 
computational semantics. So the effect was to begin to create a science of 
natural language semantics, as opposed to theory and engineering hacks. Of 
course, the latter continued and continues. For good overviews, I would suggest 
[1], and more extensively [2]. And there is the very readable citation by the 
Wikipedia article on "Formal Semantics": [3]. I don't advise [4] unless you 
have already had a healthy dose of linguistics and logic. Other references: [5, 
6, 7]. [8] provides an introduction to computational semantics.    (07)

The power of formalization is that it does make things more precise, which 
lends itself to explicitly developing hypotheses/theories for refutation, 
convergence on disputed terminology, and amenability to computational 
implementation.     (08)

Also, it probably depends on what you mean by "practical NLP". I can hack 
anything up, and that will be practical for my current project, but there is 
limited sustaining value. Having a theory or at least a model for what you 
intend to do is necessary, if you want to avoid endless hacking. Good 
engineering needs good science. In computational linguistics over the past 20 
or so years, as an example, witness the loss of knowledge in the use of 
"stemming" as opposed to "morphologizing". The former mostly tries to cut words 
left and right (or internally) either haphazardly or with the programmer's 
limited understanding of morphology for the particular language. The latter 
tries to apply morphological rules for the language, typically based on some 
theory or set of theories, in a systematic fashion, as in finite state 
morphology [9], initially developed as two-level morphology by Kimmo 
Koskenniemi many years ago.    (09)

John, rather than under-emphasizing the semantics of natural language, and 
thence being "useless for practical NLP", I think that the model-theoretic 
semantics of NL largely ignited by Montague's work has greatly advanced the 
science of the semantics of NL, and thereby made semantics eminently 
implementable for practical NLP.     (010)

Science, as we all know, is distinct from engineering, and its advancement 
enables engineering. Do I think that the model-theoretic semantics of NL as 
currently expressed represents all of the semantics-pragmatics of NL? No, 
obviously not. But (similar to the case in pre-logical AI) formal semantics 
(like formal AI) enables you to advance the science, and not just compare the 
often ad hoc, theory-free engineering approaches. And, by the way, most good 
engineering aspires to good science, if that science is still incomplete. In 
that sense, a sound engineering approach can be considered an emerging theory, 
and over time may become one.     (011)

Thanks,
Leo    (012)

[1] Partee, Barbara. 1996. The Development of Formal Semantics in Linguistic 
Theory. In Lappin, ed., The Handbook of Contemporary Semantic Theory, 
Blackwell, Oxford, UK, and Cambridge, MA, 1996, pp. 11-38.
[2] Partee, B.H., with H.L.W Hendriks, eds. (commentator: T. Janssen). 1997. 
Montague Grammar.  In Van Benthem, Johan, and Alice ter Meulen. 1997. Handbook 
of Logic and Language. Cambridge, MA: The MIT Press, Part 1, Frameworks, pp. 
7-91.
[3] Abbott, Barbara. 1999. The formal approach to meaning: Formal semantics and 
its recent developments. In: Journal of Foreign Languages (Shanghai), 119:1 
(January 1999), 2-20. https://www.msu.edu/~abbottb/formal.htm. 
[4] Dowty, David R., Robert E. Wall & Stanley Peters, eds. 1981. Introduction 
to Montague Semantics. Dordrecht: D. Reidel.
[5] Kamp, Hans; Reyle, Uwe.  1993.  From Discourse to Logic: Introduction to 
Model-theoretic Semantics of Natural Language, Formal Logic and Representation 
Theory, Part 1 and 2, Kluwer Academic Publishers, The Netherlands.
[6] Gamut, L.T.F.  1991.  Logic, Language, and Meaning, Volume 2: Intensional 
Logic and Logical Grammar.  The University of Chicago Press, Chicago and London.
[7] Portner, Paul H. 2005. What is Meaning: Fundamentals of Formal Semantics. 
Wiley-Blackwell.
[8] Blackburn, Patrick; Johan Bos. 2005. Representation and Inference for 
Natural Language: A First Course in Computational Semantics. Stanford, CA: CSLI 
Publications.
[9] Karttunen, L. ; Beesley, K. R. 2005. Twenty-five years of finite-state 
morphology. In Inquiries Into Words, a Festschrift for Kimmo Koskenniemi on his 
60th Birthday, CSLI Studies in Computational Linguistics. Stanford CA: CSLI; 
2005; 71-83.     (013)

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