Comment Re:Naive view of natural language semantics (Score 1) 56
I think that your analysis of some of the above clauses is faulty.
Your description of "John angered Bill." Is sufficient.
However, "John disliked Bill." is more likely the John object modifying it's on property of 'liking/disliking' the Bill object. The Bill object need not do anything based on the precise meaning of that sentence. If you had said that "John dislikes Bill, because Bill stole his ball." then it becomes clear that there may be a cause for John taking on the property of dislike. However, that is semanticly different than saying "Bill made John hate him."
As for "The ball is near John's foot." I don't think it is clearly absurd to give the properties you've listed, as long as we define 'near' apropriately using some sort of measurement. We should take for granted that if we're talking about positioning, we're dealing with some sort of 2d or 3d geometry. We must, of course, define near as some sort of distance threshhold. So, Foot or Ball needs a definite position, or they are simply always within that relative distance to each other. Without any more code around it, it most assuredly makes no sense. But, that's kind of a given.
Natural language interpretation is hard, but a lot of the difficulties come inappropriate use of vocabulary. We would need to define adjectives and adverbs in quantitative ways. We would need to speak in a controlled language, not necessarily an artificial one. We would need a well educated computer and an equally well educated user.
Even if coded really well, this system will end up with a lot of PEBKAC calls to the Helpdesk.
Your description of "John angered Bill." Is sufficient.
However, "John disliked Bill." is more likely the John object modifying it's on property of 'liking/disliking' the Bill object. The Bill object need not do anything based on the precise meaning of that sentence. If you had said that "John dislikes Bill, because Bill stole his ball." then it becomes clear that there may be a cause for John taking on the property of dislike. However, that is semanticly different than saying "Bill made John hate him."
As for "The ball is near John's foot." I don't think it is clearly absurd to give the properties you've listed, as long as we define 'near' apropriately using some sort of measurement. We should take for granted that if we're talking about positioning, we're dealing with some sort of 2d or 3d geometry. We must, of course, define near as some sort of distance threshhold. So, Foot or Ball needs a definite position, or they are simply always within that relative distance to each other. Without any more code around it, it most assuredly makes no sense. But, that's kind of a given.
Natural language interpretation is hard, but a lot of the difficulties come inappropriate use of vocabulary. We would need to define adjectives and adverbs in quantitative ways. We would need to speak in a controlled language, not necessarily an artificial one. We would need a well educated computer and an equally well educated user.
Even if coded really well, this system will end up with a lot of PEBKAC calls to the Helpdesk.
