Hans and Pat, (01)
I agree with both of you. (02)
HP
>> So the first order of business should be an ontology for
>> describing context and scope assumptions. (03)
PH
> And the trouble with *that* idea is, there are as many distinct
> notions of "context" as there are people saying that we need
> to describe contexts. (04)
See below for an excerpt from my book, _Knowledge Representation_. (05)
By the way, note that I start by citing (or paraphrasing) a typical
definition from a good dictionary. One of my recommendations for
anybody who is working on ontology or knowledge representation is
to keep a good dictionary handy (or better, a few good dictionaries). (06)
The definition in a typical dictionary won't be sufficiently precise
to be translated to logic. But it's a survey by a professional
lexicographer about the various ways that the word is used. (07)
That definition is not the end, but it's a good way to start the
analysis. It helps ensure that all the basics are considered and
that any new technical terms will stay within the broad range of
meanings that are in everyday use. (08)
John (09)
PS: One reason why some non-native English speakers use English more
precisely than many natives is that they use their dictionaries. But
the dictionary definition is just the *beginning* of the analysis.
_______________________________________________________________________ (010)
Source: _Knowledge Representation_ by J. F. Sowa, pp. 274-275. (011)
The word 'context' has been used with a variety of conflicting meanings
in linguistics, philosophy, and artificial intelligence. Some of the
confusion results from an ambiguity in the English word. Dictionaries
list two major senses of the word context: (012)
* The basic meaning is a section of linguistic text or discourse that
surrounds some word or phrase of interest. (013)
* The derived meaning is a nonlinguistic situation, environment,
domain, setting, background, or milieu that includes some entity,
subject, or topic of interest. (014)
> [Note: when you multiply the options in both, you get a large
> number, as Pat said. But there are some basic threads.] (015)
The word context may refer to the text, to the information contained in
the text, to the thing that the information is about, or to the possible
uses of the text, the information, or the thing itself. The ambiguity
about contexts results from which of these aspects happens to be the
central focus. These informal senses of the word suggest criteria for
distinguishing the formal functions: (016)
* Syntax. The syntactic function of context is to group, delimit,
quote, or package a section of text. (017)
* Semantics. The quoted text may describe or refer to some real or
hypothetical situation. That nonlinguistic referent is the derived
meaning of the word 'context'. (018)
* Pragmatics. The word 'interest', which occurs in both senses of the
English definition, suggests some reason or purpose for distinguishing
the section of linguistic text or nonlinguistic situation. That purpose
is the pragmatics or the reason why the text is being quoted. (019)
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