Re: [ontolog-forum] Computer science ontology vs. philosophical ontology

[William Frank <williamf.frank@xxxxxxxxx>]

Yes, John, you are absolutely right, a property, relation, event, action, by itself cannot determine meaning, even in the simple sense of being the foundation for a proposition that pictures a state of the world (let alone the role of further context in determining meaning, as mentioned by Hans.)

But the prepositions by themselves, without the property don't either. They play together.  For example,

'This sentence is in English'

is a short way of saying

This sentence is written in English

and

'The meeting is in the room'

is a short way of saying

The meeting is taking place in the room.

in both of these cases, the preposition 'in' is used to indicate one of the roles of the entities to which the relation applies, since these roles must be distinquished. 

Of course prepositions are critical and, when you add postpositions, almost a universal in language.   So, it is not that ontologists and linquists and logicians don't know how to model prepositions, they do, they model them as representing roles in relations and actions.  In synthetic languages, like latin, cases do much of the same job.  In many langauge, only some of the roles require a preposition or a case.   For example, 

John gave the book to Mary.

There is a giving event

such that

the event occured in the past

in this event,

John plays the giver role in the giving

The book plays the given thing role in the giving

Mary plays the receiver role.   (this is what the 'to' tells us.)

In general, 'to' has a directional sense, and it is our great facility with metaphor that causes us in English to use this same preposition in John went to Boston and John went to Harvard.  But, in other languages, the same 'to' preposition might *not* be used for these other cases.

In German, for example, there is a bi-play between the prepositions and the case, so that the meaning of the preposition and case together determines the role in a relationship.

So, in German, 'in' is much like our 'into' when used with the accusitive, and much like our 'in' when used with the accusitive.    But, not always.  One needs to learn sort of arbitrary differences in the way different languages, or the same langauge 30 years apart, use the same cognate prepositions, and in so doing, imagine the ways in which the metaphors of the thinkers using those prepositions have been transformed.

Wm

On Sat, Nov 2, 2013 at 9:37 PM, John McClure <jmcclure@xxxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:

Of course not and that is why the requirement that a property, by
itself, determines meaning, is ridiculous.

On 11/2/2013 2:55 PM, William Frank wrote:
> ... Is 'this sentence is in English' anything like 'the meeting is in
> the room'?

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