Re: Meaning and Semiotics - Issues for Modelling

Piek Vossen <piek.vossen@vu.nl> wrote on 10/08/2012 10.05.38:

> Piek Vossen <piek.vossen@vu.nl> 
> 10/08/2012 10.05
> 
> To
> 
> Guido Vetere/Italy/IBM@IBMIT
> 
> cc
> 
> <public-ontolex@w3.org>
> 
> Subject
> 
> Re: Meaning and Semiotics - Issues for Modelling
> 
> Dear all,
> 
> I would like to discuss this at another level. We should first 
> answer the question:
> 
> 1. Is there any semantic aspect of a word sense (I prefer lexical 
> unit) that cannot be represented in an ontological model?
> 
> It may not be easy but I think you can, if you allow semantics in 
> the ontology that incorporates probabilities and prototypicality. 
> I think that any formalization of lexical meaning can be turned into
> an ontological meaning, simply because it is a formalization.
> if it is not a formalization then the lexical meaning is ill-defined
> and we need to do more (empirical) work to learn about the word and its 
usage.
>

As far as we can formalize lexical meanings, we can represent them in a 
formal way, this is true (by definition). But what we can formalize, and 
how, is a very open issue in philosophy of language and logic, 
respectively. Frege and Tarski warned about using formal logic for 
modeling natural language, in vain. As a matter of facts, modern logicians 
are still striving to look at linguistic phenomena under the lens of 
Truth, which is quite problematic in many cases. In fact, we lack of a 
generally agreed (and positive) 'theory of meaning', and I'm afraid this 
is not a just a problem of 'empirical work'. Of course, we cannot solve 
philosophycal puzzles here, but I think that we should take them into 
account, somehow.
 
> 2. Do you want to model any semantic aspect that characterizes a 
> word sense also in the ontology?
> 
> This is another question. If we want to model pure logical 
> reasoning, there may be many lexical aspects (not just the pragmatic
> knowledge) that we do not need
> in the ontology. We do not need to represent ?buy? and ?sell? 
> separately to reason over de financial transaction process.
>

I agree, for most computational tasks, there would be no need of 
representing any semantic aspect of a word sense, even if it were 
possible.
 
> 3. What do we do with the situations that lexicons are far more 
> richer than any ontology available and thus we cannot provide 
> sufficient ontological labels to model the lexicons.
> 
> This is a more practical and pragmatic question. If the lexicon is 
> so large, complex and rich, why not use a two-layered solution where
> lexical relations take the burden off the ontology and the ontology 
> takes the burden of deeper reasoning (need to define how deep we 
> need to go). So in the lexicon, I can say that one word is the 
> informal word for ?eat? and another word is the neutral label for 
> ?eat?. In the ontology, we just have ?eat?. Many lexicalized 
> concepts are either pragmatic variants or can be defined using 
intersecting
> properties as described by Philipp for ?bald?.
> 

I like this idea of the 'two layers' very much: ontology should allow 
reasoning on real world structures (e.g. parts, phases, ect) while lexica 
should account for linguistic habits and games. By the way, Quine drew a 
line to distinguish 'ontology' (what is there) from 'ideology' (the way we 
conceptualize it through language). Maybe we can start from there ..

Regards,
 
Guido Vetere
Manager, Center for Advanced Studies IBM Italia
_________________________________________________
Rome                                     Trento
Via Sciangai 53                       Via Sommarive 18
00144 Roma, Italy                   38123 Povo in Trento, Italy
+39 (0)6 59662137                 +39 (0)461 312312

Mobile: +39 3357454658
_________________________________________________

IBM Italia S.p.A.
Sede Legale: Circonvallazione Idroscalo - 20090 Segrate (MI) 
Cap. Soc. euro 347.256.998,80
C. F. e Reg. Imprese MI 01442240030 - Partita IVA 10914660153
Società con unico azionista
Società soggetta all?attività di direzione e coordinamento di 
International Business Machines Corporation

(Salvo che sia diversamente indicato sopra / Unless stated otherwise 
above)