<!DOCTYPE HTML PUBLIC "-//W3C//DTD HTML 4.01 Transitional//EN">
<html>
<head>
<meta http-equiv="content-type" content="text/html; charset=ISO-8859-1">
</head>
<body bgcolor="#ffffff" text="#000000">
<tt>In a <a
href="http://mailman.uib.no/public/corpora/2011-January/012085.html">recent
posting</a>, John Sowa criticized so-called primitives as being
the results of analysis by adults writing dissertations and
expressed the belief that there are no primitives that are truly
primitive. I would agree with John to the extent such work may be
<i>a priori</i>. However, I am concerned that his statements may
have a discouraging effect on research into primitives,
particularly given his well-deserved reputation. Similar
statements by Veronis and Ide in 1991 had such an effect on
research with "machine-readable dictionaries" (all the rage during
the late 1970s and 1980s).<br>
<br>
I have spent 40 years with my digraph analysis of dictionary
definitions, most notably in early 2002 helping Oxford identify
hypernyms (superordinates) for a noun hierarchy derived from the <i>Oxford
Dictionary of Engliah</i>. This work has been of some use in
Oxford's <a href="http://oxforddictionaries.com/">latest roll-out</a>.
My techniques have proved useful in analyzing <a
href="http://www.clres.com/online-papers/PrepositionClasses.pdf">prepositions</a>
and FrameNet <a href="http://www.clres.com/db/feindex.html">frame
elements</a> (which was aided by the Oxford noun hierarchy). I
view this work as being very <i>a posteriori</i>. Robert Amsler
recently expressed his enthusiasm for Google n-grams as being
useful identifying component elements of noun compounds, likening
this to analyzing chemical compounds into their component elements
and binding properties. Thus, I hope we don't take John's words to
stifle the hunt for semantic primitives (look at the billions in
the hunt for the Higgs boson).<br>
<br>
I have an expanded version of this note at my <a
href="http://www.clres.com/blog/?p=172">blog</a>, where I
provide further links to salient materials.<br>
<br>
Ken<br>
</tt>
<pre class="moz-signature" cols="72">--
Ken Litkowski TEL.: 301-482-0237
CL Research EMAIL: <a class="moz-txt-link-abbreviated" href="mailto:ken@clres.com">ken@clres.com</a>
9208 Gue Road Home Page: <a class="moz-txt-link-freetext" href="http://www.clres.com">http://www.clres.com</a>
Damascus, MD 20872-1025 USA Blog: <a class="moz-txt-link-freetext" href="http://www.clres.com/blog">http://www.clres.com/blog</a>
</pre>
</body>
</html>