Are there extensive discussions of examples in some accessible article ?
> However, the relational words also fall into hierarchies. In particular,
> all of the thematic roles (or case relations) associated with verbs can
> be classified as subtypes of Participant, further subdivided along the
> lines of Aristotle's four "causes" (or "aitiai"), and then further
> subdivided according to finer and finer distinctions for various
> kinds of actions described by the verbs.
But there may not be agreement on all, for matters of, yes, philosophy.
I had a discussion with Doug Skuce some time ago as to whether a person is
the agent (me) or the patient (him) of thinking.
I don't know how he is being thought about that question now :-)
> And in response to Sergei, I don't see any clear distinction between
> commonsense categories as expressed in natural languages and the highly
> formalized categories of science, especially mathematics. All of the
> scientific terms (including number, space, time, etc.) are refinements
> and extensions of the commonsense terms. And the commonsense terms
> tend to be much more stable over thousands of years, while the scientific
> terms tend to shift their meanings with every passing fad.
Scientific terminology uses common terms, but metaphorically:
- for particles: spin, charm, colour,
- for numerical analysis: convolution, matrix inversion, fixed point
- in astrophysics: black hole
- in linguistics: tree, trace, stem
The notion of stability cuts both ways: the commonsense vocabulary is more
stable across century (diachronically), but at all point it is often
polysemous, or has interindividual and intergroup fuzziness (how open
should a door be to be called ajar? How big is a big book ? How many
grains of sand make a sandpile? and other sorites).
How do conceptual graphs address continuous notions? Stick to
language usage ? Then, which usage, if it varies?
If one acknowledges variety in language usage, a formalization done from
usage should say explicitly which usage it is based on.
> John Sowa
JF Delannoy
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JF Delannoy
RES International, Ottawa