SUO: Re: Enhancing Data Interoperability with Ontologies...
Rich,
CLCE already handles pronouns.
> ... Do you think this paper is comprehensive
> enough, and the area solid enough, to produce
> a CLCE that can handle pronouns?
But they're called variables.
Natural languages have various numbers of pronouns.
In some languages, they are inflected according to
person (e.g., "I", "you", "he"), number ("she" vs.
"they"), gender ("he", "she", "it"), position
("this" vs. "that"), or other features.
Aristotle introduced the idea of using letters
as a more systematic replacement for pronouns.
Euclid adopted them for his book on geometry,
and they have become known as "variables".
Since different natural languages have different
numbers of pronouns and different rules for
associating them with various features, I believe
that it is more systematic to adopt Aristotle's
principle of using letters for pronouns.
For CLCE, I recommend Decartes's letters x, y, and z
followed by an optional string of digits, such as
x23 or z0009. This option provides an infinite
number of pronouns, which are language independent,
and they can be copied unchanged to logic and
programming languages.
You can use these pronouns by themselves as "X"
or you can use them as part of a referential noun
phrase, such as "the cat X". See the CLCE spec's.
John