Re: SUO: Axiomatizing lower level WordNet terms
Hi Ian,
Been traveling so didn't get a chance to reply to the following,
which I must rather shocked me!
Ian Niles, responding to my query about the axiomiatization of "rescue":
>>JB: >Can we specify that the location (a SUMO Object) can be abstract
>>>(they were rescued from danger)? In fact, the abstract nature of the
>>>object being a threat seems to be definitional for rescue. You can't
>>>be rescued from something that is not a threat. An Object just
>>>can't *be* a threat, it has to be considered as such by some one,
>>>which makes it more of a semiotic object than just a member
>>>of
>>
>
>To my ear, expressions like "rescue from danger", "rescue from a threat",
>etc. are pleonastic. Whenever someone is rescued, he is removed from some
>sort of danger or threat. Accordingly, I think that we can still require
>that the object of a rescue event be a physical object of some sort. At
>least, I don't see that your comment constitutes a counterexample to the
>requirement.
>
I am not quite sure what your ear has to do with it. Is this meant to be
a methodology?!
Here are some random extracts from the Cobuild Bank of English and the
International Corpus of English:
====================================================
COBUILD:
to rescue men and women from a wreck
Ascari being rescued from the harbour
to rescue it from otherwise faceless, featureless oblivion
fearless youngster who rescued boy from fire wins top award
have any passengers been rescued from the lifeboats?
rescued from the Oceanos off coffee bay
would come to his aid and rescue him from the sense of being assailed on
all sides.
I recently helped her rescue six puppies and their mother frmo a man who
had ...
called out of retirement to rescue the Texas University Armadillos from
the wilderness
Adrian Noble was the man who rescued Stephens from the oblivion of the 1980s
Fashion has finally rescued from the shame of the 1970s
Its fire marks were rescued from storerooms around the country
Montini was rescued from such routine chores
ICE:
but hopefully it will <,> help to rescue University College from <,> its
financial embarrassments at the present time
And in the fourteen forties uh Henry May of Bristol had a ship which
rescued the Portuguese ship from pirates
==================================
The problem with a lot of linguistics in the 60-80s was that it was done in
armchairs, dredging examples from the minds of the armchair linguist. Many
now see this is a hopeless endeavor, since the mind is not very good at
forgetting
about what it is trying to prove and producing less biased more
representative
data. Now, in my random extractions above, I cannot yet make any claims
as to representativeness, but the results are at least suggestive. To
allocate
what appears to be a healthy percentage of usages to "pleonistic" (huh?)
seems a good way of losing touch with reality, at least as far as language
judgements are concerned.
Of course, it may be a way of getting an ontology up and running since one
can forget about the messy details.
But that just emphasizes my conviction that the formalization of particular
ontologies for particular domains of discourse (e.g., linguistics) should
be left to experts and not be trampled on in a monolithic SUMO.
Best,
John B.