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Re: SUO: Universal Time, other universals, and cultural contextof SUO.


Pat,

At 10:52 PM 5/17/2001 -0500, pat hayes wrote:

>>Pat,
>>  Davidsonian semantics is a good start
>
>But what has that got to do with KR? Are you suggesting that we change KIF 
>to a language with Davidsonian semantics?

Davidsonian semantics, at least as I understand it, is just an approach to 
reifying event instances in order to render English sentences more 
effectively in logic.  The notion of an event instance, "surrounded" by 
roles that attach to the event is a KR issue.

After reading Davidson, or Parsons one may get a sense that it's "obvious" 
but that to me is often the sign of good research, that it's so correct 
that after absorbing the idea, one can't think of why I shouldn't be so.

>>, as well as the more fully developed and formal theories of event 
>>interpretations found in Terence Parson's "Events in the Semantic of English".
>
>OK, I will take a look, I do not know this in detail.  But if it really is 
>a semantics of English, I doubt if it will be of great KR interest: there 
>are so many things in the world that English has no semantics for.

Well, even though English itself may not have explicit semantics for 
certain notions, that's not to say than an analysis of the meaning implicit 
in many English sentences can't have a beneficial impact on KR research.

Adam

>Pat
>
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Adam Pease
Teknowledge
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