RE: OpenCyc progress report

You may want to look at the other WordNet book - EuroWordNet, ed. Piek
Vossen, pub. Kluwer. This describes "the building of a multilingual database
with lexical semantic networks or wordnets for several European languages."
I do not know how much discussion there has been of multilingual issues in
semantic web communities. But I understand that concepts are expressed in
different ways in different languages, and that some concepts are not
lexicalised at all in some languages. Therefore, one could not rely on some
simple translation mechanism. Where cultures digress, one assumes, the
discrepancies might be greater. Personally, I don't believe that any
ontology is free of cultural bias.
 
Even if these issues are outside the scope of your current investigations,
the book has some very good background material on WordNet as a whole.
 
................................................................
Bill Hutchison, Chief Executive
Wordmap Limited, 26 Upper Borough Walls
Bath BA1 1RH, United Kingdom
DDI +44 (0)1225 358182 fax (0)1225 358183
www.wordmap.com <http://www.wordmap.com> 
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-----Original Message-----
From: Richard H. McCullough [mailto:rhm@cdepot.net]
Sent: 07 December 2002 19:09
To: RDF-Interest
Cc: William Thomas; Richard S. Latimer; Stephen Reed
Subject: OpenCyc progress report


1. Linux version
All of my previous problems were caused by WinZip 
corrupting the download files (e.g. inserting carriage returns
into the shell scripts).  After re-downloading directly to my Linux
machine, everything works as described in the release notes.
 
2. retrieving knowledge
To become proficient at retrieving knowledge from OpenCyc,
I am reading the online documentation at OpenCyc.org.
Since OpenCyc uses WordNet, I am also reading 
Christiane Fellbaum's "WordNet" book.
 
3. using knowledge
Next, I will study the structure of OpenCyc's microtheories
(contexts), in order to assess the feasibility of using OpenCyc
for Semantic Web applications.  Don't hold your breath while
waiting for my results.
============ 
Dick McCullough 
knowledge <http://rhm.cdepot.net/>  := man do identify od existent done
knowledge haspart proposition list