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

[Adam Pease <apease@ks.teknowledge.com>]

John,
   Thanks for the more extensive set of references.  In my zeal to commend 
exploration of computational linguistics to this list I may have been too 
quick to state that sweeping groups of people might not be aware of this 
research.

Adam

At 11:54 PM 5/17/2001 -0400, John F. Sowa wrote:

>Pat,
>
>You keep citing them all the time.  For granularity, you cited
>Jerry Hobbs.  WordNet is perhaps the most widely used collection
>of categories, and it was done by a psychologist, George Miller,
>who has been hanging out with linguists for the past 40+ years.
>And there are quite a few logicians who hang out with computational
>linguists, especially when working on theories of modality,
>tense logics, etc.
>
> > Adam, can you cite any? I havn't come across many such insights from
> > computational linguistics in KR.
>
>Following is a book review I wrote (which is scheduled for the
>March 2001 issue of _Computational Linguistics_) of a book by
>a linguist, M. A. K. Halliday, who has a lot of interesting ideas
>related to topics in ontology.  (I had to make some minor adjustments
>to let it slip through your filter.)
>
>John Sowa
>
>______________________________________________________________________
>
>Construing Experience through Meaning:
>A language-based approach to cognition
>
>by M. A. K. Halliday and Christian M. I. M. Matthiessen
>
>London and New York:  Cassell, 1999
>xiii+657 pp; paperback, ISBN 0-304-70490-3, $102.00
>
>reviewed by John F. Sowa
>
>Michael Alexander Kirkwood Halliday has been actively analyzing and
>documenting the interactions between syntax and semantics for over forty
>years, and his systemic-functional theory has been a foundation for
>important work in computational linguistics for at least thirty years.
>The first major application of systemic theory was the SHRDLU system
>by Winograd (1972).  The largest ongoing series of applications has
>been developed at the USC Information Sciences Institute:  language
>generation (Mann 1982; Hovy 1988); discourse analysis and rhetorical
>structure (Mann & Thompson 1992); and the interface between the lexicon
>and world knowledge (Bateman et al. 1990; Matthiessen 1995).
>
>In this book, Halliday and Matthiessen present a comprehensive survey
>of semantics and its relationships to syntax and cognition.  Although
>they present their subject from a systemic-functional point of view,
>they show how their approach is related to a wide range of work in both
>computational and theoretical linguistics.  One notable omission from
>their 23-page bibliography is Noam Chomsky, whose period of active
>research almost exactly coincides with Halliday's.  They do, however,
>give a fair summary of semantic theories based on Chomsky's approach,
>ranging from the early work of Katz and Fodor to the more recent work
>by Jackendoff.
>
>The book consists of fifteen chapters organized in five parts.
>In Part I, the authors contrast the systemic approach with a view
>of knowledge representation as a "piecemeal accumulation" of concepts
>with "no overall organization."  Instead of treating language "as a
>kind of code in which pre-existing conceptual structures are more or
>less distortedly expressed," they view language as a semiotic system
>that serves "as the foundation of human experience."  The goal of
>systemic theory is to present a comprehensive view of how humans
>construe experience through language.  Unlike Chomsky, they do not
>consider grammar as "autonomous" but as an integral part of the
>_lexicogrammar_, which _realizes_ meaning in words, phrases, sentences,
>and paragraphs.
>
>Part II, comprising chapters 2 through 7, presents the _meaning base_,
>which corresponds to what many authors would call an ontology.  The
>meaning base, however, represents categories of experience with a
>topmost node called _phenomenon_ instead of categories of existence
>with a topmost node called _entity_.  The first subdivision of phenomena
>is a three-way partitioning according to levels of complexity:
>
>  1. Elementary ideas or _elements_ are realized by the lexicogrammar
>     as words or short groups of words, such as _rain_, _from the west_,
>     or _8 hard-boiled eggs_.  Computationally, elements may be
>     represented by slots in a frame, nodes in a graph, or typed
>     variables in logic.
>
>  2. Configurations of elements or _figures_ are realized by phrases
>     or clauses, such as _rain ending from the west_ or _chop finely_.
>     Computationally, a figure may be represented by various data
>     structures, such as a frame, list, or graph.
>
>  3. Complexes of figures or _sequences_ are realized by complex
>     sentences or paragraphs, such as _Take 8 hard-boiled eggs, chop
>     finely, mash with 3 tablespoons of soft butter, and add salt and
>     pepper_.  Computationally, a sequence could be represented by
>     a network of frames, a list of lists, a graph of graphs, or
>     structures of objects in an object-oriented language.
>
>Each of these categories is further divided and subdivided by various
>distinctions, some dyadic and some triadic.  Element is classified as
>participant, circumstance, or process.  Figure is classified by another
>triad of relational (being or having), material (doing or happening),
>and mental (sensing or saying).  These categories are further elaborated
>and illustrated with numerous examples.  To demonstrate the generality
>of the approach, Chapter 7 shows how the semantic categories realized
>in English can also be realized in Chinese and other languages.
>
>Part III consists of two chapters that show how the theory can be
>implemented in a computational system for language generation, with
>examples of weather reports and cooking recipes.  Part IV consists of
>three chapters that compare the theoretical and descriptive techniques
>of systemic-functional theory to other approaches.  The concluding Part
>V consists of three chapters that apply systemic theory to an analysis
>of how humans construe experience through language.  Chapter 14 has
>an intriguing analysis of the evolution of linguistic expressions
>from folk theories to scientific theories.  Instead of drawing a sharp
>dichotomy between commonsense and scientific ways of thinking, the
>authors show how the basic linguistic mechanisms of abstraction and
>metaphor are used to systematize and formalize scientific language.
>Metaphor is fundamental to both science and poetry.  The primary
>difference is that poets constantly strive to create novel metaphors,
>while scientists recycle, revise, and elaborate the most successful
>of their colleagues' metaphors.
>
>In summary, this book makes a strong case for the systemic approach as
>a fruitful alternative to Chomsky's view of autonomous syntax.  The
>authors demonstrate that semantics has important structures that are
>cross-linguistic and formalizable.  Although they present their data
>with the terminology, notation, and viewpoint of the systemic-functional
>approach, their analyses, distinctions, and categories can be adapted
>to semantic theories based on other approaches.
>
>The authors criticize the logic-based, model-theoretic approaches for
>their limited ontologies and neglect of important aspects of language,
>such as metaphor.  Yet logicians recognize the need for richer
>ontologies, and many, if not most would agree that semantics is the
>proper starting point for a study of natural language.  The authors
>try to draw a sharp distinction between the deductive methods of logic
>and the method of inheritance used in frame-based systems.  A logician,
>however, would reply that inheritance is the oldest of all rules of
>inference; it was introduced by Aristotle for syllogisms, and it is
>a derived rule in every modern system of logic.  The methods of
>unification used in many logic-based systems implement inheritance
>in ways that are equivalent to or more general than frame systems.
>Rather than being a competitor, the systemic approach can be
>a valuable complement to the logic-based approaches.
>
>The authors consider language as a semiotic system, but they only
>mention the dyadic view of semiotics developed by Saussure and
>linguists influenced by Saussure, such as Hjelmslev and Firth.  CSP
>analyzed the sign relation in greater depth than Saussure and emphasized
>its irreducible triadic nature.  Although Halliday and Mattheissen never
>mention CSP, they have rediscovered many of CSP's triads in their
>systemic analysis.  Their choice of _phenomenon_ as the most general
>category is an unconscious endorsement of CSP's point that his
>categories were primarily phenomenological rather than ontological.
>The systemic triad of being-having, doing-happening, and sensing-saying
>corresponds to CSP's fundamental triad of Quality, Reaction, and
>Representation.  Most of the other triads in the systemic meaning base
>also have a strong CSP flavor, and a more conscious application
>of CSP's version of semiotics might help clarify and refine many
>of the triadic distinctions in the systemic approach.
>
>Perhaps the least attractive feature of the book is its formatting.
>The authors used a conventional word processor to print camera-ready copy
>on A4 paper, which the publisher reproduced without change.  The result
>is a heavy, unwieldy tome with a great deal of wasted paper, a generally
>unfinished appearance, but a price tag of $102.  With that price and
>format, the book is destined to sell very few copies, the authors will
>get little or nothing in royalties, the publisher's high price will seem
>to be justified, and a potentially important book will never be read
>by students who might profit from it.  The book would get better
>distribution if the authors had simply put the electronic version on
>their web site; better yet, professional societies such as the ACL
>should put books such as this on their web sites.
>
>Bibliography
>
>Bateman, J. A., R. Kasper, J. Moore, and R. Whitney.  1990.
>_A general organization of knowledge for natural language
>processing:  the Penman upper model_.  Research report.
>Information Sciences Institute, University of Southern California,
>Santa Monica.
>
>Hovy, E.  1988.  _Generating natural language under pragmatic
>constraints_.  Lawrence Erlbaum, Hillsdale, NJ.
>
>Mann, W. C.  1982.  _An overview of the Penman text generation
>system_.  Research report 83-114.  Information Sciences Institute,
>University of Southern California, Santa Monica.
>
>Mann, W. C., and S. A. Thompson, eds.  1992.  _Discourse Description:
>Diverse Linguistic Analysis of a Fund-Raising Text_.  Benjamins,
>Amsterdam.
>
>Matthiessen, C. M. I. M.  1995.  _Lexicogrammatical Cartography:
>English Systems_.  International Language Sciences Publishers, Tokyo.
>
>CSP,  1991-1998.  _The Essential CSP_, vols. 1 and 2,
>ed. by N. Houser and C. Kloesel, Indiana University Press, Bloomington.
>
>Winograd, T.  1972.  _Understanding Natural Language_.  Academic Press,
>New York.

Adam Pease
Teknowledge
(650) 424-0500 x571