Re: [CL] The Decidability Fetish
Thus spake John F. Sowa at 1:24 am -0400 on 15-10-04 re Re: [CL] The
Decidability Fetish:
> Philippe, Bill, et al.,
[snip]
> And by the way, following are some excerpts from
> a book review that I just finished. It shows how
> much confusion is floating around about ontology,
> semantics, and related topics. (The book, by the
> way, is about computational linguistics, but I
> won't say anything more about it until the review
> has appeared in print.)
John,
could we have the reference for the book please?
> John
[snip]
> * The modern history is just as flawed. They claim that first-order
> predicate calculus (FOPC) has failed "to have made a historical
> impact." In fact, FOPC is the foundation for the SQL databases
> that run the world economy. That is certainly an impact.
Indeed a few years ago I did work for the team at Bull Co, that implemented a
DB system which resolved queries in Natural Language. An essential component
that I contributed to was a Logic Module which translated the query to a FOPC
formula (and which was then translated to SQL for querying the DB -- and then
back again to give the reply in Natural Language). As usual, Bull failed to
sell the product, which was perhaps too highly priced, but nevertheless this
entirely justifies what you say above ;-)
Cheers
~=michel
--
Michel Eytan
eithn@free.fr
I say what I mean and mean what I say