Michael,
Perhaps I need to add some detail.
The point at issue is whether all of the senses of a particular word
needed for language understanding can be included in a semantic lexicon.
My experience suggests that they can, even though new senses are being
developed all the time. The new senses can also be included in the lexicon,
if they are important enough to warrant the effort. Phrases such as
"potential murderer" do not create a new sense for either word in that
phrase, and the meaning of the phrase can be accurately interpreted from the
known individual senses. A phrase such as "cat house", when first used,
would not be properly interpretable if the nontraditional meaning of "cat"
were not already in the lexicon, and would have to be learned unless its
meaning were quite clear from the circumstances of use. Some
interpretations of word combinations follow a standard pattern, and when
they do not there are many ways that context can be used to *learn* the
meaning of a new word or word sense. But often one needs to see a
definition to learn a new word or phrase, even if the phrase has familiar
words. In cases where a nearby word or context seems to "modify" the
meaning of some known word, it is either an existing idiomatic phrase, or
the speaker *creating* a new word sense that may or may not be interpretable
for those who do not already know that sense. Such new senses are created
all the time, and can be for individual words alone or in combination. The
problem of understanding newly created word senses does not depend on those
words being part of a phrase. (01)
But for the creation of word-combination neologisms does not mean that a
word sense has been *changed* to something new by its proximity to another
word, it means that a new sense has been *created*, and a new sense can be
created for individual words or for phrases of any structure. (02)
If a newly created word sense, alone or in combination, cannot be easily
and accurately interpretable from the surrounding context, it can and should
eventually find itself recorded as a new sense in the lexicon, as an
individual word sense, or as a phrase such as "look at". The lexicon can
get very large, but in cooperative communication speakers do not use words
that their audience are not likely to understand. (03)
Pat (04)
Patrick Cassidy
MICRA Inc.
cassidy@xxxxxxxxx
1-908-561-3416 (05)
-----Original Message-----
From: ontolog-forum-bounces@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
[mailto:ontolog-forum-bounces@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx] On Behalf Of Michael
Brunnbauer
Sent: Sunday, August 04, 2013 7:35 AM
To: [ontolog-forum]
Subject: Re: [ontolog-forum] Context and Inter-annotator agreement (06)
Hello Patrick, (07)
On Sat, Aug 03, 2013 at 07:54:01PM -0400, Patrick Cassidy wrote:
> Word combinations will often have meanings that are related to but not
> identical to any of the individual words. In the phrases "cat house" and
> "house cat" each word has a different sense.
[...]
> Consider again the problematic cases you mentioned and see if they
> actually illustrate the point you want to make. (08)
Your "cat house" / "house cat" example (a noun modifying the sense of
another
noun) actually illustrates my initial point better than my examples. A
dictionary of senses would have to include those phrases. See also the reply
from William Frank. (09)
My examples illustrate another point I was trying to make: That
understanding of natural language requires a lot of knowledge - including
deep understanding of the involved senses - and the ability to apply this
knowledge. (010)
Regards, (011)
Michael Brunnbauer (012)
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