[Corpora-List] ad-hoc generalization and meaning

[Eric Atwell]

On Wed, 12 Sep 2007, Rob Freeman wrote:

> Do I need to map from one set of rules to another? Can't I just interpret
> the syntactic rules directly as some kind of logic? These are formal
> systems, after all, just combinations of symbols. It might not be the logic
> we are used to, but doesn't any combination of symbols define a "logic" of
> its own?

I've managed not to be drawn into this discussion but couldnt resist
making one point:

A logic isnt just a set of symbols (representing fact/knowledge), 
but also rules defining how to make inferences: how to infer new facts
from known facts. The problem is that symbols/categories used as
standard in grammar are not all the same as those used by logicians.
For example in grammar, "and" and "or" are both Coordinating
Conjunctions, but they are mapped onto very different logical functions.

Some researchers have tried a "surface" approach to knowledge
representation and reasoning with specific syntactic constructs, 
eg Silver N "Inferencing methods using systemic functional grammar" 
(PhD Leeds Univ 1995) dealt with polar and wh-questions; but noone has 
proposed a logic covering the whole gamut of grammatical constructs found
in a Corpus, as far as I know - please correct me if I'm wrong.

Eric Atwell,

Senior Lecturer, Language research group leader, School of Computing
Faculty of Engineering, UNIVERSITY OF LEEDS, Leeds LS2 9JT, England
TEL: 0113-3435430  FAX: 0113-3435468  WWW/email: google Eric Atwell


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