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RE: CE Starter grammar
John,
.
. Further comments interspersed below, prefaced "GH> ".
Cheers Graham Horn
National Data Standards Unit
Australian Institute of Health and Welfare
================================================
Phone: +61.2.6244.1094
Fax: +61.2.6244.1199
Email: Graham.Horn@aihw.gov.au <mailto:graham.horn@aihw.gov.au>
-----Original Message-----
From: John.Velman@HSC.com [mailto:John.Velman@HSC.com]
Sent: Saturday, June 02, 2001 2:08 AM
To: suo-ce@ieee.org
Subject: RE: CE Starter grammar
All,
Well, both Matthew and Graham are right. We need to focus on something that
looks like English hence the need to explicitly establish a syntactic
structure consistent with traditional structures. Our goal is a language
stands unambiguously in an isomorphic relation to KIF.
Perhaps one approach is to take a minimal syntactic structure such as Adam
proposes,
GH> I developed a bigger structure than necessary for our immediate
purposes in order to ensure sound extensibility.
GH> If you look at the structure I put forward, you'll see it overcomes
some shortcomings I found in Matthew's original. Furthermore, I made the
changes because There were some pretty basic things I couldn't represent
with it.
GH> The main point I suggest is that we separate the word types from the
function types where those words are used. For example I added the concepts
of process, qualifier, and adverb. I also couldn't see why direct and
indirect objects should be treated as part of the verb. I further addressed
some optionality considerations.
agree on some core terms and syntax (in CE) for "exists" "forall" "and"
"or"... and then play with it a little. My experience suggests that it is
really useful to play with some simple -- even toy -- examples before
getting too deep into a design. (If I have some time later on today -- and
noone else has done it -- I'll give this a try.).
GH> Agreed.
Also, while I agree that it will ultimately be useful to expand into
questions and commands as Graham suggests, I propose that for now we
concentrate on assertive statements.
GH> I think you're reading too much into what I was doing. I was just
trying to remove some problems I could see with the structure presented. I
admit, I responded by presenting a far more comprehensive structure, but I
needed to go to that level in order to satisfy myself that what I was
proposing had the soundness I believe we need for this sort of project. I
was also drawing on a pretty well established paradigm.
-- By the way, :-) I endorse David's rules for this list, and hereby
declare myself a participant.
GH> Me to.
Best,
John Velman
"Horn, Graham" <graham.horn@aihw.gov.au>@majordomo.ieee.org on 06/01/2001
01:32:24 AM
Sent by: owner-suo-ce@majordomo.ieee.org
To: "'West, Matthew MR SSI-GREA-UK'" <Matthew.R.West@IS.shell.com>,
"'Adam Pease'" <apease@ks.teknowledge.com>, suo-ce@ieee.org
cc:
Subject: RE: CE Starter grammar
Hi Matthew,
. I don't know whether you're right or not.
. I presume you got my earlier e-mail augmenting the structure
Adam initiated.
. I believe it would pay to use the power of the traditional
GręcoRomanbased grammar rules that have had literally thousands of years
of evolution.
. Once one has a sound structure, by all means restrict it
down to a smaller sub-set. But if one doesn't get the structure right to
start with, one will end up with something others will be able to use as
evidence that "something like ACE can't possibly work". I'm sure you recall
the many e-mails along that line I copped earlier on.
. I remain absolutely adamant that for a modified restricted
version of a natural language one MUST have a totally consistent grammatical
and semantic structure. That's why I feel there is value in taking Adam's
line at this initial stage.
Cheers Graham Horn
National Data Standards Unit
Australian Institute of Health and Welfare
================================================
Phone: +61.2.6244.1094
Fax: +61.2.6244.1199
Email: Graham.Horn@aihw.gov.au <mailto:graham.horn@aihw.gov.au>
-----Original Message-----
From: West, Matthew MR SSI-GREA-UK [mailto:Matthew.R.West@IS.shell.com]
<mailto:[mailto:Matthew.R.West@IS.shell.com]>
Sent: Friday, June 01, 2001 6:12 PM
To: 'Adam Pease'; suo-ce@ieee.org <mailto:suo-ce@ieee.org>
Subject: RE: CE Starter grammar
Dear Adam,
I think you are starting at the wrong end of the problem. We only
want to say those things that can be said in KIF, but we want them
to be easily understood by a consistent translation to/from English.
So it would be better to start from the KIF end (much more
restricted) and identify English forms for what can be said. This
would probably give a more restricted grammar than you have
proposed.
Regards
Matthew
===============================================================
Matthew West http://www.matthew-west.org.uk/
<http://www.matthew-west.org.uk/>
Principal Consultant Shell Visiting Professor
Operations & Asset Management The Keyworth Institute
Shell Services International The University of Leeds
http://www.shellservices.com/ <http://www.shellservices.com/>
http://www.keyworth.leeds.ac.uk/ <http://www.keyworth.leeds.ac.uk/>
H3229, Shell Centre, London, SE1 7NA, UK.
Tel: +44 207 934 4490 Fax: 7929 Mobile: +44 7796 336538
===============================================================
> -----Original Message-----
> From: Adam Pease [mailto:apease@ks.teknowledge.com]
<mailto:[mailto:apease@ks.teknowledge.com]>
> Sent: 01 June 2001 03:15
> To: suo-ce@ieee.org <mailto:suo-ce@ieee.org>
> Subject: CE Starter grammar
>
>
>
> Folks,
> I'll suggest the following strawman as a start on a
> restricted English
> grammar.
>
> sentence
> / \
> SNP|Q VP
> / \ / \
> Det N|PN V NP|SNP
> / | \
> Det M N|PN
>
> where:
> SNP = simple noun phrase
> NP = noun phrase
> Det = determiner [the|a|an|all|every]
> N = noun
> V = verb
> VP = verb phrase
> PN = proper noun
> M = modifier
> Q = query word [who|what|where]
>
>
> Adam