Re: Semantic Layers (Was Interpretation of RDF reification)

I've been watching this conversation for a while, and I just had to  
comment.

Your Internet Business Logic does not do NLP. I looked through the  
"questions" you have for several of the categories. Perl (for one  
example) is more expressive than the DSL you have created, which is  
essentially an SQL-like query language, only more verbose (and  
possibly more limited, though I can't verify that). Some aspects of  
your effort are interesting, but it is nowhere near a successful  
approach to Natural Language Processing, which attempts to process  
things humans might write without trying to conform to some (very)  
limited grammar. NLP people (and just about everyone else writing  
parsers) have been able to do what you seem to be doing for many,  
many years.

On the more general topic of levels of reasoning as pertains to RDF,  
I'm extremely glad RDF is as simple as it is, including the  
restriction to 3-tuples. Successful pervasive technologies are "as  
simple as they can be" for their purpose, and the subject-predicate- 
object structure is about as simple as one can get for describing  
relationships between resources, which is most of what everybody  
wants to do with RDF.

Sure, we layer some stuff on top of that, but when we get down to it,  
in most applications where RDF is appropriate we're still trying to  
describe relationships between resources, and RDF is excellent for  
that task because it is as simple as it can be at doing that.

Russell


On Mar 29, 2006, at 7:39 PM, Adrian Walker wrote:

> Hi John -
>
> I'm glad I changed the title of this excellent discussion from "RDF  
> reification" to "Semantic Layers" (;-)
>
> At 04:04 PM 3/29/2006 -0800, you wrote:
>> For "pragmatics", read "purpose", "relevance", and "intent".
>> I certainly admit that current methods of NLP don't do a
>> good job of deriving that kind of information from ordinary
>> language.  On the other hand, they don't do a good job of
>> deriving the syntax and semantics either.
>
> I hope you are excluding the Internet Business Logic system from  
> your distaste for "current methods of NLP".
>
>  As you know, the system takes an unconventional approach, and it  
> actually works.
>
> The system is online at the site below, and you can use it to write  
> rules in open vocabulary English into a browser.   The English  
> reliably takes its meaning from its context.  To see this, you can  
> use your browser to run your rules and to get English explanations  
> of the results.
>
> The design of the system is in no way a contribution to  
> conventional NL research, or  semiotics, etc.  It just quietly gets  
> the job done, so perhaps it's reasonable that NL researchers are  
> not interested in it.
>
> Then again, perhaps they should be interested (:-)
>
>                                            Cheers,  -- Adrian
>
>
> Internet Business Logic (R)
> Executable open vocabulary English
> Online at www.reengineeringllc.com
> Shared use is free
>
> Adrian Walker
> Reengineering
> PO Box 1412
> Bristol
> CT 06011-1412 USA
>
> Phone: USA 860 583 9677
> Cell:    USA  860 830 2085
> Fax:    USA  860 314 1029
>