Re: OWL "Sydney Syntax", structured english

>Hello,
>
>On 11/29/06, Pat Hayes <phayes@ihmc.us> wrote:
>>
>>We did however give up trying when it came to subpropertyof, I have
>>to admit; and we use graphic conventions rather than text to indicate
>>domain and range and other technical stuff. I'd love to see how
>>anyone proposes to state domains and ranges in English.
>>
>
>What do you think about that:
>
>Everything that loves something likes it.
>Everything that writes something is a writer .
>Everything that is written by something is a writing .
>Everything something writes is a writing .
>
>the last two are for range, one with a passive, the other without.

Pretty good with loves and writes. But now try it with acquaintance 
and meeting (I can't use 'met' as I mustn't use a verb):

Everything that acquaintance something meeting it.

Everything that meeting something is an animal.

I don't think it is possible to do this with a wide range of likely 
property names without it either being often incomprehensible, or 
else requiring NL-level complexity in the parser. People have been 
trying to do this kind of thing for many years (COBOL was an early 
example) and it has never worked satisfactorily.

Pat Hayes

>--
>kaarel


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Received on Wednesday, 29 November 2006 21:36:59 UTC