🚀 go-pugleaf

In article <01beb37e$e6e410f0$a0c010ac@ws7966>,
Stefan MUEHLBACHER <SMuehlba@frequentis.com> wrote:
>Patrick Juola <juola@mathcs.duq.edu> wrote :
>> The knowledge acquisition bottleneck becomes the madness.  We've just
>> identified one syntactic construction (identical verb conjunction) to
>> which you postulate a new KR primitive that must be stored as
>> meta-knowledge (presumably on most base knowledge units in the database).
>> I will then identify *another* syntactic construction, to which you
>> will then postulate another KR primitive, and so forth.  Trust me on
>this;
>> I'm a linguist and I can pull constructions indefinitely -- and when I
>> cease being able to pull them out of thin air, I can always pull them
>> out of the literature. 8-)
>> 
>> So in the long run, I will present you with some thousand or so
>> constructions, all of which require you to come up with an ad-hoc
>> new primitive -- or let's be generous and assume that only half of them
>> require new primitives.  That's still a lot of data that *isn't*
>> represented yet.
>
>I think I understand your point. But the existence of the human knowledge
>proofs that there must be a way out of this dilemma.

Proves, not proofs, Mr. Muehlbacher.  Yes, it does.  But it *doesn't*
disprove the claim that the way out of the dilemma is to, for example,
abandon the symbolic manipulation of some sort of 'primitive' altogether.
A theologically-inclined Cartesian dualist might claim that human
knowledge only exists by virtue of ineffable angel-like sprites in our
heads and souls and that no mechanistic technique could possibly
address the complexities of language.  A Penrosian would replace
'angel-like sprites' with 'quantum microtubules' and say the same thing.
And a strong connectionist would suggest that the solution lies in
patterns and similarity relationships which are themselves irreducible
to symbolic patterns.

>I think there is a way to solve problems like that (I did it practically
>for the software):
>
>Metaknowledge cannot be introduced in an independent way. When a system has
>metaknowledge then the information is present twice: First as the fact
>itself and second as the knowledge on a higher level that the fact exists.
>It is possible to introduce the fact itself (on a deeper unconscious level)
>without being forced to introduce the metaknowledge at the same time. Later
>we are able to add the metaknowledge as a retrievable information on a
>higher level.

The question is whether you've exhausted the *space* of meta-knowledge
in your framework... and whether the framework is itself tractable.  In
general, the answer to those questions is 'no' for any systems with
which I'm familiar.

>> >But for the symbol "is_tired" we have a narrow set of relation parts:
>> >1) the one who is tired, the subject
>> >2) optionally a time
>> >3) optionally a place
>> >4) maybe some else, but not many.
>> >
>> >For the symbol "person" or "today" exist maybe some hundred relation
>> >patterns or more where they can be used.
>> 
>> Pick up a good textbook on verb aspects, sir.  I think you're wrong
>> about the apparent simplicity of verb relation patterns; "The Evolution
>> of Grammar", by Bybee, Perkins, and Pagliuca lists about a hundred
>> individual and mostly orthogonal verb "relation parts."
>
>I will do that. But I am not shure if you interpreted the issue the way I
>did. To be shure I try to make it more clear: You speak about a hundred
>individual and mostly orthogonal verb "relation parts."
>I did not mean there are few "relation parts" generally for verbs. I agree,
>there are many.
>I just said there are few "relation parts" for the (semantic, not
>syntactic) verb "is_tired". Maybe we can find more relation parts even for
>that verb, but the main message can be expressed by not more than three or
>four parts plus the verb "is_tired" itself.

Except that it can't, I'm afraid.   Again the mandatory reference to
BPP -- some aspects of the main message you may not have realized :

i) Information status :  Do you know of your own senses that person
is_tired, are you inferring it from other information you have, have
you been told this, or is this 'common knowledge'?  This distinction
can be linguistically salient.  

ii) Habituality : Is this person merely tired now, or is this person
often tired, or is tired part of his state of being?

iii) Reality : Does the situation of this person being tired actually
hold, or is this an unreal situation (hypothetical, future, planned-for), &c?

iv) Necessity : Is this tiredness *NECESSARY* in all possible worlds, or
does it only hold true in some circumstances?  

... and so forth.

In English, most of these are expressed in varying auxilliary verbs; there's
a difference between/among.

I am tired
I think I'm tired.
I might be tired.
I must be tired.
I can't be tired.
I will be tired [at a time].
I will be tired [if something happens].
I tire [easily].

But, well, this exhaustive list of examples tires me. 8-)

	-kitten