Dear Phil,
You wrote:
Without explicit representations
of meaning, individuals even
slightly removed from localized discussions will fail to understand or will
misinterpret natural-language information.
Even WITH explicit
representations of meaning, individuals … will fail to understand or will
DIFFERENTLY interpret natural language information. All meaning occurs within
a single mind. Communicating Bob’s meaning web to Carol doesn’t
indicate that Carol views the same explicit representation (or implicit
representation) and comes up with the same meaning. Ted and Alice may “understand”
it completely differently from Bob, Carol and each other.
Even the participants in those discussions will have different
interpretations of that information. (Reactions to meeting notes usually
confirm those differences!)
Yes,
The cost of reverse-engineering the meaning of such communications recorded
solely as natural-language information is extraordinarily high: wasted time, duplication
of effort, introduction of errors ... and opportunities missed.
Phil Murray
Again, that’s
the legacy of Babel.
Having worked in large software design and development environments, the
expensive communication costs are due to the diversity of individual belief
systems, preferences, habits and emotional structuring, or lack thereof.
"... there is no such
'thing' as an objective context, and so there is
no general theory of
contexts, or science of contexts, which can be
applied to all cases of
"context". Indeed, since, in the limit, it seems
that almost anything can
influence meaning under some circumstances, it
follows that anything at
all can be considered to be a context."
I might rewrite part of
that to say, "almost anything *will* [subtly or
grossly] influence meaning
in *every* circumstance." For this reason, it
is difficult to
deconstruct the meaning of any particular
natural-language utterance
to find the meaning behind it.
Absolutely correct,
-Rich
Sincerely,
Rich Cooper
EnglishLogicKernel.com
Rich AT EnglishLogicKernel DOT com
9 4 9 \ 5 2 5 - 5 7 1 2
-----Original Message-----
From: ontolog-forum-bounces@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
[mailto:ontolog-forum-bounces@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx] On Behalf Of Phil Murray
Sent: Wednesday, December 11, 2013 7:32 AM
To: [ontolog-forum]
Subject: Re: [ontolog-forum] LInked Data meme revisited
Spot-on and very nicely stated, Hans.
I would also reference Pat Hayes' post to the Ontolog
forum of 1/2/2008
9:07 PM
(http://ontolog.cim3.net/forum/ontolog-forum/2008-01/msg00035.html),
in
which he states:
"... there is no such 'thing' as an objective
context, and so there is
no general theory of contexts, or science of contexts,
which can be
applied to all cases of "context". Indeed,
since, in the limit, it seems
that almost anything can influence meaning under some
circumstances, it
follows that anything at all can be considered to be a
context."
I might rewrite part of that to say, "almost
anything *will* [subtly or
grossly] influence meaning in *every* circumstance."
For this reason, it
is difficult to deconstruct the meaning of any
particular
natural-language utterance to find the meaning behind
it.
But, however, nevertheless -- also keeping in mind
that no one here
believes that we can represent human knowledge
perfectly -- it is still
possible to create formal representations of exchanges
of meaning.
Humans can internalize the meaning of those
representations with
sufficient accuracy to make judgments about their
relevance and usefulness.
It is highly desirable to do so -- proactively, as
those communications
take place -- because static "information"
is no longer our friend. The
meaning of those communications is negotiated. Without
explicit
representations of meaning, individuals even slightly
removed from
localized discussions will fail to understand or will
misinterpret
natural-language information. Even the participants
in those
discussions will have different interpretations of
that information.
(Reactions to meeting notes usually confirm those
differences!)
The cost of reverse-engineering the meaning of such
communications
recorded solely as natural-language information is
extraordinarily high:
wasted time, duplication of effort, introduction of
errors ... and
opportunities missed.
Phil Murray
Hans Polzer wrote:
> John,
>
> Your points are further underscored by the issue
of context in which the
> words are uttered or published. Much (most?)
dialog takes place in
> institutional and domain relationship contexts
(such as this forum and in
> the workplace context most of us have spent a
major portion of our lives
> in). While the changes in definition of common
words are often minor or even
> negligible/inconsequential in most such contexts,
a significant portion of
> the words have very specific and variant
definitions in such contexts. Some
> of the recent email dialog in this forum provides
many examples of this, and
> the business world is filled with domain/trade
and company-specific
> terminology and word senses. Also, while many aim
to publish to a broad (but
> nonetheless constrained) audience and strive to
use "standard" or common
> word senses, much dialog is aimed at specific
purposes by dialog
> participants based on specific relationships
among those participants. And
> the relationships among participants are
themselves dynamic. So we have
> dynamism in the evolution of language and word
senses, we have broad
> variability in contexts in which the words are
used, and we have dynamism in
> the relationships of the dialog participants to
each other.
>
> Of course, this is all very frustrating to people
who want universal
> interoperability and understandability - that
"universal business language
> translator" mentioned somewhat
tongue-in-cheek(ly) in a classic commercial
> (I believe it was for IBM, if I remember
correctly). In theory, we should
> all explicitly enumerate all the context,
purpose, effective duration, and
> frames of reference parameters (among others)
that might pertain to the
> definitions we use in some given string of words
we utter or publish.
> Pragmatically, we do it only rarely and only in
specific contexts in which
> we are aware of, or are alerted to, the
importance of doing so. Even then,
> we typically only enumerate what we view as the
most important context
> parameters (sometimes only one). Indeed, we often
react indignantly when
> someone else points out that we left out some
context condition/caveat -
> "well of course, that's what I meant",
or "everyone knows that", or "I'm not
> trying to boil the ocean", or
"nitpicker".
>
> A key function of "session
establishment" actions, such as user logon or
> "account" creations is to manage
dynamism in context and relationships. This
> allows some level of consistency and precision in
word definitions and data
> element definitions in computer-mediated
interactions/transactions within
> the scope limits of the session or
institutional/domain relationships of the
> participants (the dreaded data silos mentioned in
past dialogs on this
> forum). Rather than continue to strive to do
away with such relationship
> management mechanisms via universal
("context-free", "relationship-free")
> linked data, it would be better, in my view, to
add mechanisms for
> representing context and relationship information
on a "drill-down" basis.
> By this I mean to continue to allow context
information to be ignored, if
> dialog participants or information seekers choose
to do so, but to make such
> information available "on demand" if
participants sense that there may be
> some mismatch in word/data definitions. One way
to do this is to provide
> "meta" links with any data links that
point to context/relationship
> parameters that drove the particular reason for
the link being provided.
> These parameters could include a few common
context parameters, such as
> institution name and linker's purpose for the
link, but also should be
> open-ended to allow the kind of dynamism
discussed above and in your email.
> Meta-links would be optional for pragmatic
reasons and used only when the
> author/creator of the link senses that there may
be followers of the link
> who should be aware of link context information,
but might not be. I
> realize this is a bit of hand-waving on my part,
but I believe many existing
> domain-specific communication protocols and data
models already incorporate
> some of these conceptual elements. Let's promote
commonality and
> standardization in definitions in contexts of
defined scope and purpose,
> but support dynamism, diversity and evolution in
definitions with changing
> contexts, relationships and scope.
>
> Hans
>
> -----Original Message-----
> From: ontolog-forum-bounces@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
> [mailto:ontolog-forum-bounces@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx]
On Behalf Of John F Sowa
> Sent: Tuesday, December 10, 2013 4:36 PM
> To: '[ontolog-forum] '
> Subject: Re: [ontolog-forum] LInked Data meme
revisited
>
> Kingsley and Rich,
>
> The idea of using precise symbols and terminology
in science and in
> programming languages is useful -- but only for a
very narrow application.
> The reason why natural languages are so flexible
is that a finite vocabulary
> can be adapted to an infinite range of
applications. That implies that it's
> impossible (and undesirable) to force words to be
used with fixed and frozen
> definitions.
>
> RC
>> I don't think it will be feasible in the next
decade to find a
>> universal dictionary.
> I would revise that point in the following way:
>
> It will *never* be possible or desirable to
have a fixed dictionary
> of precisely defined word senses for any
natural language. The
> French organized l'Académie française to
stop their language from
> evolving. The net result is that the French
adopt their new words
> from the most rapidly evolving of all
languages: English.
>
> Following is a copy of a note I sent to Ontolog
Forum in October.
> I strongly recommend Adam K's article. The title
is taken from a comment by
> Sue Atkins, a professional lexicographer who
devoted her entire career to
> defining words and collaborating with linguists,
computational linguists,
> and computer scientists.
>
> Many people wish that precise URIs would solve
the ambiguity problem.
> They could get much better odds by wishing to win
the Powerball lottery.
>
> John
>
> -------- Original Message --------
> Subject: "I don't believe in word
senses." Sue Atkins
> Date: Sat, 12 Oct 2013 11:44:01 -0400
> From: John F Sowa <sowa@xxxxxxxxxxx>
> To: '[ontolog-forum] '
<ontolog-forum@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>
>
> The subject line is a quotation by the
professional lexicographer Sue
> Atkins. She certainly knows what she's talking
about, as her Wikipedia
> entry indicates:
>
> http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/B._T._S._Atkins
>
> Adam Kilgarriff, a computational linguist, used
that quotation as the title
> of a widely cited paper:
>
>
http://www.kilgarriff.co.uk/Publications/1997-K-CHum-believe.pdf
>
> From the abstract of that paper:
>
>> Word sense disambiguation assumes word
senses. Within the lexicography
>> and linguistics literature, they are known to
be very slippery entities.
>> The paper looks at problems with existing
accounts of `word sense' and
>> describes the various kinds of ways in which
a word's meaning can
>> deviate from its core meaning. An analysis is
presented in which word
>> senses are abstractions from clusters of
corpus citations, in
>> accordance with current lexicographic
practice. The corpus citations,
>> not the word senses, are the basic objects in
the ontology. The corpus
>> citations will be clustered into senses
according to the purposes of
>> whoever or whatever does the clustering. In
the absence of such purposes,
> word senses do not exist.
>
> I strongly agree with both Sue A. and Adam K. on
those issues. I won't say
> that I completely agree with either or both on
everything, but the points
> they make are always well informed and well worth
considering.
> Following are Adam's publications:
>
>
http://trac.sketchengine.co.uk/wiki/AK/Papers
>
> Annotations can be useful for many applications.
But in general, they must
> always be considered approximations for some specific
purpose in the context
> for which they were developed. This fact has
been very well known to
> translators for centuries.
>
> John
>
> PS: Beryl Atkins adopted the name Sue because
her husband couldn't
> pronounce 'Beryl'.
>
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