RE: some notes

>  > Dictionary definitions are not really definitions in any foundational
>sense:
>>  they are kind of sketches of a meaning which themselves rely on the
>>  same connected web of shared knowledge (some of it about language
>>  itself) which they set out to explain. URIs don't have this
>>  surrounding context of shared beliefs and so on; and in any case,
>>  URIs are not NL words.
>
>I disagree.

? So you are saying that URIs *are* NL words?

>Although dictionary definitions do not reflect the same rigor as
>a mathematical definition, they certainly provide enough definition to allow
>a "common usage"

By human native speakers, sure. Although there is a great children's 
game where one person gets to read out a definition from a dictionary 
(omitting obvious clues such as synonyms and keywords) and the other 
has to guess the word. It can be quite remarkably difficult: try this 
for example, from the OED:

"One of the epidermal appendages of ...., usually in the form of a 
central shaft or midrib, of a horny nature, in part tubular, for the 
rest square in section and solid, fringed on either side with a .... 
row of thin narrow plates mutually adpressed, which form a rounded 
outline at the end."

But the key point here is that a dictionary, like any other book, is 
readable only by someone who already knows the language: and *any* 
adult human being brings to bear an incredibly rich context of 
meaning and interpretation to any linguistic act. There is no hope of 
having software do anything remotely like this in the forseeable 
future; and even if we include human beings in the relevant society 
of users, human native speakers don't have URIs attached to 
information in their heads.

>  According to http://www.merriam-webster.com/ a
>pharmaceutical is defined as a medicinal drug. So even without context, I
>should be able to glean enough knowledge to know that using the word
>'pharmaceutical' could be used to refer to an aspirin, but not to my dog.

Not at all: think of the contextual knowledge in that very example. 
Asprin is a drug; people don't eat dogs, drugs are used for medical 
purposes and usually must be ingested in order to work, .... (For all 
I know, there may have been times and places where dogs, or parts of 
dogs, may have been used as pharmaceuticals.) Even the simplest act 
of linguistic comprehension is based on so much context that no 
attempt to write it out formally has ever succeeded.

>While I certainly do't claim that if we had enough "URI dictionaries" we
>could avoid all misuse, abuse, and disagreement, I can't help but think that
>it would be beneficial to have registries play an authority role (perhaps
>more descriptive than prescriptive).

I agree with you there.

>As someone else already stated, isn't
>the difference between words and URI's (simply viewed as tokens for the
>moment) that while a NL word may have different meanings represented by the
>same string (token), we insist that URI's reflect the different meanings by
>assigning different strings to each meaning.

Well, this kind of claim is often made, but I don't think it stands 
up to close examination, even when applied to existing examples of 
URI use on the conventional Web.

>..not so different from what is
>used in referencing dictionaries as in pharmaceutical[1], pharmaceutical[2].

I think it is VERY different. For a start, the dictionary definitions 
don't fix the meanings of words: they simply indicate them in a 
concise way.

>
>I also disagree that
>
>>  NL takes ages to build up meaning through usage,
>
>Certainly language as a whole has taken ages to reach its present state, but
>new words pop into common usage overnite, btw.

NOt overnight, but they do appear, as do new usages of old words. 
But this hardly makes the case for the dictionary analogy: these new 
meanings are only found in dictionaries later, if at all.  (There are 
some fascinating studies of regional variations in everyday 
terminology, eg there are something like a hundred different words 
for woodlice, none of them in standard dictionaries and all used only 
locally in a geographical area.)

>  OK, maybe one shouldn't
>consider 'btw' a word, but there are plenty examples that are, not all from
>the internet/web either. If a group of KB engineers start using some URI
>'.../theNewFoo', it will quickly assume some meaning among that group and
>any who have a need to converse with that group regarding theNewFoo.

But why would this group of engineers use a URI to converse? I don't 
know anyone *that* geeky. Even engineers do usually talk using at 
least a  kind of English.  Unless of course it was a genuine URI 
which actually did something on the Web (or better, which the Web 
could do something with) and that is why they are using it.  So its 
still not like a word: NL words don't do anything on the Web.

BTW, even the WGs who have to be constantly be talking to one another 
about URIs tend to distinguish a URI from what might be called its NL 
word-form. Nobody actually says, and hardly anyone even writes, 
"http://www.w3.org/2000/01/rdf-schema"; what we say to one another 
are things like "are-dee-eff-ess", which itself tends to get 
shortened to a monosyllable, and we invent shorthands like rdfs: to 
use in emails.

But in any case, the analogy with NL suggests that any attempt to 
control or even influence this by external fiat or authority isn't 
likely to succeed, if this kind of thing is indeed anything at all 
like language. If you want some real-world experience in trying to 
attach meanings to words by writing authoritative registries, just 
ask the Academie Francaise about things like "rosbif" and "bigmac".

Pat


-- 
---------------------------------------------------------------------
IHMC	(850)434 8903 or (650)494 3973   home
40 South Alcaniz St.	(850)202 4416   office
Pensacola			(850)202 4440   fax
FL 32501			(850)291 0667    cell
phayes@ihmc.us       http://www.ihmc.us/users/phayes