SUO: RE: The Language Instinct
Thanks for the information, Jon. I have two responses to your contribution:
(1) I'm unclear what it is you're referring to by "this sort of work" in the first sentence.
(2) I'm also at a loss to interpret your message as a response the question I posed. It seems like just a tangential comment on the general topic of "language instincts". (Which is interesting, but not of much use to the working group.) My query was directly about the (possible) relationship between "semantic tagging" behaviors of webloggers and the work of this group.
Bill
William C. Burkett
Senior Information Engineer
Modulant
562-495-6500 x2013
562-495-6509 Fax
wburkett@modulant.com
> -----Original Message-----
> From: Jon Awbrey [mailto:jawbrey@att.net]
> Sent: Monday, October 06, 2003 12:01 PM
> To: Burkett, Bill
> Cc: SUO
> Subject: Re: The Language Instinct
>
>
> o~~~~~~~~~o~~~~~~~~~o~~~~~~~~~o~~~~~~~~~o~~~~~~~~~o
>
> Bill,
>
> This sort of work has been going on from the days of
> the Sanskrit grammarians, carried on, parse by parse,
> by hermeneuticians, biblical and otherwise, linguists
> from the days when they were still called philologists,
> ethographers, animal and human, ethnographers, mostly
> human, structural anthropologists, and in more recent
> times by computerized-cognitive protocol analysts and
> other sorts of qualitative researchers. The state of
> the art in these fields was well advanced when it all
> fell off the charts of some philosophers, and so when
> they rediscovered language games late in life, they
> naturally thought it was their own big discovery.
> But the intelligent component of the vector in
> computational work has alwaya been to get our
> machines to do this grind for us, so we can
> quit sentence diagramming our the pedigreed
> pigeon scratchings of our pet pidgins.
>
> Jon Awbrey
>
> o~~~~~~~~~o~~~~~~~~~o~~~~~~~~~o~~~~~~~~~o~~~~~~~~~o
>
> Burkett, Bill wrote:
> >
> > All:
> >
> > I just today ran across and read the following article on xml.com:
> >
> > http://www.xml.com/pub/a/2003/09/17/udell.html
> >
> > In it, the author, John Udell, likens the semantic tagging habits of
> > webloggers to natural language behaviors. He makes the following
> > observeration about a "universal taxonomy":
> >
> > "...But that would require writers to categorize their material,
> > and we all know that's a non-starter. The absence of a universal
> > taxonomy is the least of our problems. Even if such a thing
> > existed (or could exist), we'd be loath to apply it because
> > we are lazy creatures of habit. We invest effort expecting
> > immediate return, not some distant future reward."
> >
> > I recognize that the lattice-of-theories ideas seems to be
> the preferred perspective of this group, and that LOT seems
> to complement the observations of Udell. I wanted to share
> the article because I found it interesting and relevant to
> the group. I would also be curious how members of group
> would interpret the semantic tagging behavior of webloggers
> (as described in the article) vis-a-vis the objectives of the
> SUO working group. Do you think this behavior fits within
> the view of the SUO working group as to how the overall SUO
> WG "recommendation" (or whatever it is we're producing) will work?
> >
> > --- Bill
> >
> > William C. Burkett
> > Senior Information Engineer
> > Modulant
> > 562-495-6500 x2013
> > 562-495-6509 Fax
> > wburkett@modulant.com
>
>
>
> o~~~~~~~~~o~~~~~~~~~o~~~~~~~~~o~~~~~~~~~o~~~~~~~~~o
>
>