It joins the semantic Web, ontologies, knowledge management, Web services, and Web processes into one fully comprehensive resource, serving as the platform for exchange of. As a new generation of technologies, frameworks, concepts and practices for information systems emerge, practitioners, academicians, and researchers are in need of a source where they can go to educate themselves on the latest innovations in this area.
Semantic Web Information Systems: State-of-the-Art Applications establishes value-added knowledge transfer and personal. The current web contains a wealth of information in the form of natural text. In the medical domain, the number of documents related to healthcare continues to grow at exponential rate. Today s desktops can retrieve millions of web documents but can understand none.
HTML documents are made to be. This volume is concerned with how ambiguity and ambiguity resolution are learned, that is, with the acquisition of the different representations of ambiguous linguistic forms and the knowledge necessary for selecting among them in context. Available in PDF, ePub and. In the winter of , essays were commissioned on the topic of ambiguity and underspecification. All papers received were subjected to a thorough review process.
The present volume, comprising ten self-contained papers and an introductory chapter, is the result. Natural language is known for the ambiguity of its expressions. Bringing together experts from both historical linguistics and psychology, this volume addresses core factors in language change from the perspectives of both fields. It explores the potential and limitations of such an interdisciplinary approach, covering the following factors: frequency, salience, chunking, priming, analogy, ambiguity and acquisition.
Easily accessible, the book. We wish to avoid insoluble disagreements between atheist and theist semanticists, for example, over whether one could refer to God. To avoid such problems, we adopt a broad interpretation of the notion referring expression see Unit 4 so that any expression that can be used to refer to any entity in the real world or in any imaginary world will be called a referring expression. To do so would be to abandon the object of our study.
So we insist as in 2 above that the English conjunction and, for example, could never be a referring expression. The case of unicorns was relatively trivial. Practice 1 If unicorns existed, would they be physical objects? What are we to make of expressions like tomorrow and the British national anthem, which cannot possibly be said to refer to physical objects? It is in fact reasonable to envisage our notion of reference in such a way that we can call these referring expressions also, because language uses these expressions in many of the same ways as it uses the clear cases of referring expressions.
Even though expressions like tomorrow, the British national anthem, eleven hundred, the distance between the Earth and the Sun, etc. We call them referring expressions along with John, the roof, and Cairo. Language is used to talk about the real world, and can be used to talk about an infinite variety of abstractions, and even of entities in imaginary, unreal worlds. Example When an astronomy lecturer, in a serious lecture, states that the Earth revolves around the Sun, the universe of discourse is, we all assume, the real world or universe.
Practice Is the universe of discourse in each of the following cases the real world as far as we can tell R , or a partly fictitious world F? Note that no universe of discourse is a totally fictitious world. So in examples like this we have interaction between fact and fiction, between real and imaginary worlds.
Summary In the course of a sequence of utterances, speakers use referring expressions to refer to entities which may be concrete or abstract, real or fictitious. The predicates embedded in a referring expression help the hearer to identify its referent. Semantics is not concerned with the factual status of things in the world but with meaning in language.
The notion of universe of discourse is introduced to account for the way in which language allows us to refer to non-existent things.
Unit 6 Study Guide and Exercises Directions After you have read Unit 6 you should be able to tackle the following questions to test your understanding of the main ideas raised in the unit. What would happen if this were the case? If you feel familiar with these ideas, take the entry test below.
If not, review the appropriate units. Entry test 1 Is an utterance tied to a particular time and place? Otherwise, continue to the introduction. Introduction Most words mean what they mean regardless of who uses them, and when and where they are used.
Indeed this is exactly why words are so useful. Only if we assign a fairly constant interpretation to a word such as man, for example, can we have a coherent conversation about men. These words are called deictic words: the general phenomenon of their occurrence is called deixis. The word deixis is from a Greek word meaning pointing.
Example The first person singular pronoun I is deictic. Feedback 1 Dodge City 2 Fresno, California 3 A referring expression modified by this refers to an entity place, person, thing etc. Comment These exercises show that the words this and yesterday are deictic. The referent of you is the addressee s of the utterance in which it is used and is therefore dependent upon the particular context.
Comment So far, all of our examples of deictic terms have been referring expressions, like you, here, and today, or modifiers which can be used with referring expressions, like the demonstrative this. Such deictic terms help the hearer to identify the referent of a referring expression through its spatial or temporal relationship with the situation of utterance.
There are also a few predicates which have a deictic ingredient. Feedback 1 Yes 2 Yes 3 the place where you are Comment This psychological shifting of viewpoint just illustrated is an example of the flexibility with which deictic terms can be interpreted.
Sometimes these are interpreted very broadly, and sometimes very narrowly and strictly. In addition to deictic words such as here, now, come, and bring , there are in English and other languages certain grammatical devices called tenses for indicating past, present, and future time, which must also be regarded as deictic, because past, present, and future times are defined by reference to the time of utterance.
We will not delve into these details here. A generalization can be made about the behaviour of all deictic terms in reported speech. In reported speech, deictic terms occurring in the original utterance the utterance being reported may be translated into other, possibly non-deictic, terms in order to preserve the original reference.
Assume that John was speaking to you in each case. Practice Imagine a language, called Zonglish, exactly like English in all respects, except that it contains no deictic terms at all, i.
Every speaker of Zonglish would have to use his own name instead of the personal pronoun I. But since tense is a deictic category, Johan Brzown still has the problem of informing his hearer that he wants the cup of tea at the time of utterance, not in the past, and not in the future. A language without such terms could not serve the communicative needs of its users anything like as well as a real human language. Of course, all real human languages do have deictic terms.
Deictic expressions bring home very clearly that when we consider individual sentences from the point of view of their truth, we cannot in many cases consider them purely abstractly, i.
The truth of a sentence containing a deictic expression can only be considered in relation to some hypothetical situation of utterance.
Practice 1 Can you tell by itself whether the sentence You are standing on my toe is true or false? The is traditionally called the definite article, and a the indefinite article. But what exactly is definiteness? An answer can be given in terms of several notions already discussed, in particular the notion of referring expression, identifying the referent of a referring expression, and universe of discourse.
A new notion is also needed, that of context. Definition The CONTEXT of an utterance is a small subpart of the universe of discourse shared by speaker and hearer, and includes facts about the topic of the conversation in which the utterance occurs, and also facts about the situation in which the conversation itself takes place. Example If I meet a stranger on a bus and we begin to talk about the weather and not about anything else , then facts about the weather e.
Facts not associated with the topic of the conversation or the situation on the bus e. Comment The exact context of any utterance can never be specified with complete certainty. The notion of context is very flexible even somewhat vague. Note that facts about times and places very distant from the time and place of the utterance itself can be part of the context of that utterance, if the topic of conversation happens to be about these distant times and places.
Thus, for example, facts about certain people in Egypt could well be part of the context of a conversation in Britain five years later. Practice According to the definition of context, 1 Is the context of an utterance a part of the universe of discourse?
Feedback 1 Yes 2 Yes 3 universe of discourse context of utterance immediate situation of utterance Comment Now we relate the notion of context to the notion of definiteness.
Rule If some entity or entities i. Practice If I carry on a conversation with a friend about the time, five years earlier, when we first met in Egypt and we are now holding the conversation in the garden of my house in Britain : 1 Which of the following two utterances would be more appropriate? The expressions judged inappropriate in the previous practice would be quite appropriate in other contexts.
Think of such contexts for practice. Contexts are constructed continuously during the course of a conversation. As a conversation progresses, items previously unmentioned and not even associated with the topics so far discussed are mentioned for the first time and then become part of the context of the following utterance. When something is introduced for the first time into a conversation, it is appropriate to use the indefinite article, a.
Once something is established in the context of the conversation, it is appropriate to use the. But the definite article the is not the only word which indicates definiteness in English. Example That book is definite. It can only appropriately be used when the speaker assumes the hearer can tell which book is being referred to.
The personal pronoun she is definite. It can only appropriately be used when the speaker assumes the hearer can tell which person is being referred to. The Earth is definite. It is the only thing in a normal universe of discourse known by this name. Practice 1 We reproduce below a passage from Alice in Wonderland. Pick out by underlining all the expressions which clearly refer to something the reader is supposed to be aware of at the point in the passage where they occur, i.
You should find 15 such definite expressions altogether. Which are they? Feedback 1 line 1, the house; line 2, the March Hare, the Hatter, it; line 3, them, the other two, it; line 4, their elbows, it, its head; line 5, the dormouse, Alice, it, I, it 2 the table and the dormouse 3 No 4 the March Hare and the Hatter 5 the house, the March Hare, the Hatter, and Alice 6 the table and the dormouse Comment This passage from Alice in Wonderland is written in a very simple straightforward narrative style, in which things are introduced into the context by means of indefinite expressions, e.
This kind of structure is actually only found in the simplest style. More often, authors begin a narrative using a number of definite referring expressions.
We give an example in the next exercise. When she was home from her boarding-school I used to see her almost every day sometimes, because their house was right opposite the Town Hall Annexe. The three main types of definite noun phrase in English are 1 Proper names, e. John, Queen Victoria, 2 personal pronouns, e. By contrast, expressions like a man, someone, and one are all indefinite. It follows from our definition of definiteness p. In generic sentences Unit 6 , for example, and in other cases, one can find a phrase beginning with the where the hearer cannot be expected to identify the referent, often because there is in fact no referent, the expression not being a referring expression.
Practice 1 In the sentence The whale is a mammal, as most typically used, which particular whale is being referred to? On hearing this, could the hearer be expected to identify the referent of him? Does definiteness contribute in any way to the truth or falsehood of a sentence considered in relation to a given situation?
Practice I am working in the garden, and accidentally stick a fork through my foot. I tell my wife, who knows I have been gardening and knows the fork I have been working with. The doctor knows nothing about my gardening tools. Which of the two utterances just mentioned would it be more appropriate to use? Examples of deictic words are I, you, here, now, come. Considered objectively, the referent of a referring expression e. The definiteness of a referring expression tells us nothing about the referent itself, but rather relates to the question of whether the referent has been mentioned or taken for granted in the preceding discourse.
The definiteness of a referring expression gives the hearer a clue in identifying its referent. Unit 7 Study Guide and Exercises Directions After you have read Unit 7 you should be able to tackle the following questions to test your understanding of the main ideas raised in the unit.
Explain and illustrate. Be sure to change the deictic expressions as needed. Assume the people are speaking to you. Give an example and explain. When is it appropriate to use the indefinite article a? Is every noun phrase with the definite article semantically definite?
Give examples. You first call your parents, then the police, to report the accident. Which of the following utterances would you most likely say to each party?
If not, review the relevant unit s. Entry test 1 Which of the following most appropriately describes reference? Circle your preference. Henry, square, expensive, and, under, not, love 5 Which of the following is correct? Feedback 1 b 2 c 3 a 4 square, expensive, under, love 5 b If you have scored at least 4 out of 5 correct, continue to the introduction. Otherwise, review the relevant unit. Introduction We have outlined the basic distinction between sense and reference Unit 3 and explored details of the use of reference Units 4—7.
In subsequent units 9—11 we will develop the idea of sense in similar detail. The present unit will act as a bridge between the preceding units on reference and the following units on sense, introducing several notions, including extension and prototype, which in certain ways bridge the conceptual and theoretical gap between sense and reference.
In other words, we are going to try to pin down more specifically how the notions of sense and reference are related to each other in determining the meaning of a linguistic expression. Practice 1 In the case of expressions with constant reference, such as the Sun or the Moon, could a speaker be said to know what they refer to simply by having memorized a permanent connection in his mind between each expression and its referent?
Remember, from your answer to question 2 , that it cannot be because you have memorized a connection between the expression the cat and some particular object, a cat, in the world. Comment The point that we are spelling out here is that someone who knows how to use the word cat has an idea of the potential set of objects that can be referred to as cats, i.
This idea or concept may only be a vague, or fuzzy, one, but we will come back to that point later. This leads us to the notion of the extension of a predicate.
Example The extension of window is the set of all windows in the universe. The extension of dog is the set of all dogs in the universe. The extension of house is the set of all houses.
The extension of red is the set of all red things. Comment In the case of most frequent common nouns, at least, an extension is a set of physical objects. Thus, extension contrasts with sense, since a sense is not a set of anything. And extension contrasts with referent, since a referent is normally an individual thing, not a set of things. Beside these contrasts, the notion of extension has similarities to that of sense, on the one hand, and to that of reference, on the other.
Extension is like sense, and unlike reference, in that it is independent of any particular occasion of utterance. On the other hand, extension is like reference and unlike sense, in that it connects a linguistic unit, such as a word or expression, to something non-linguistic i. Assume that there is someone named Jaime Lass who owned cats at that time. Comment The notions of reference and extension are clearly related, and are jointly opposed to the notion of sense. Now we will consider further the idea that a speaker of a language in some sense knows the extensions of the predicates in that language, and uses this knowledge to refer correctly to things in the world.
Practice 1 The cat I had as a child is long since dead and cremated, so that that particular cat now no longer exists. Is it possible to refer in conversation to the cat I had as a child?
Does it seem reasonable to say that a speaker is continually updating his idea of the set of all cats, to include the newcomers? Thus, the extension of window, for example, includes all past windows, all present windows, and all future windows. Similarly, the extension of dead includes all things which have been dead in the past and presumably still are, if they still exist , which are dead now, and which will be dead in the future.
Predicates are tenseless, i. In actual use, predicates are almost always accompanied in sentences by a marker of tense past or present or a future marker, such as will. Correspondingly, the extension of the phrase is alive could be said to be the set of all things alive at the time of utterance. This restricting of the extensions of predicates is an example of a more general fact. Practice Study the drawing. Imagine a very impoverished little universe of discourse containing only the objects depicted.
Practice Assuming that the predicates two-legged, four-legged, striped, mammal, creature, etc. Logicians allow themselves to talk of a set with no members. Classic counterexamples include the pairs featherless biped vs rational animal, and creature with a heart vs creature with a kidney. The only featherless bipeds, so it happens apparently, are human beings, and if we assume that human beings are also the only rational animals, then the phrases featherless biped and rational animal have the same extensions, but of course these two phrases do not mean the same thing.
It also happens to be the case that every creature with a heart also has a kidney, and vice versa, so that the extensions of creature with a heart and creature with a kidney are identical, but again, these two phrases do not mean the same thing.
We will not discuss such developments here, because they seem to carry to an extreme degree a basic flaw in the essential idea of extensions. This flaw can be described as the undecidability of extensions. We bring out what we mean by this in practice below.
Feedback 1 Yes 2 Yes 3 No 4 Evolution proceeds in such minute stages that one has the impression of a continuum. Comment The point is that even people who can reasonably claim to know the meaning of chicken cannot draw a clear line around the set of all chickens, past, present, and future, separating them from all the non-chickens.
In short, the extension of chicken is not a clear set. This fuzziness is a problem which besets almost all predicates, not only chicken and egg. If so, what would you call it? If so, what would you call such an object? Feedback 1 No 2 No 3 Yes, this situation is imaginable. It is unusual, in everyday situations, for there to be much problem in applying the predicates cat, or chicken.
Cats and chickens are natural kinds, which the world obligingly sorts out into relatively clear groups for us. But in the case of some other kinds of predicates, it is obvious that everyday language does not put well-defined boundaries around their extensions. In addition, the idea of extension was to explain their ability as hearers to identify the referents of referring expressions containing predicates, and their ability to make and understand descriptive statements using predicates, as in Atkins is a cat.
But speakers are in fact only able to do these things in normal situations. The idea of extension is too ambitious, extending to all situations. In fact, a speaker does not have a perfectly clear idea of what is a cat and what is not a cat. Between obvious cats and obvious non-cats there is a grey area of doubt, as we see in the following sketches. In other words, the prototype of a predicate can be thought of as the most typical member of the extension of a predicate.
Example A man of medium height and average build, between 30 and 50 years old, with brownish hair, with no particularly distinctive characteristics or defects, could be a prototype of the predicate man in certain areas of the world. A dwarf or a hugely muscular body-builder could not be a prototype of the predicate man. Practice For each of the drawings 1 — 7 , say whether the object shown could be a prototype of the predicate given below it for an average person living in Europe or North America.
Feedback 1 Yes 2 No 3 No 4 Yes 5 No 6 Yes 7 No Comment Since we are not especially interested in the language of any one individual, but rather in, say, English as a whole, we will talk in terms of shared prototypes, i. Consider these examples. Practice 1 Could a double-decker bus of the kind found in British cities be a prototype for the predicate bus for a British English-speaker? The idea of a prototype is perhaps most useful in explaining how people learn to use some of the predicates in their language correctly.
Recent research on the acquisition of categories in human language indicates that the prototypical members of the extension of a predicate are usually learned earlier than non-prototypical members. Predicates like man, cat, dog are often first taught to toddlers by pointing out to them typical examples of men, cats, dogs, etc.
This kind of definition by pointing is called ostensive definition. Obviously, however, not all concepts can be learned in this way. Practice 1 Could the predicate bottle be defined ostensively, by pointing to a prototypical bottle? Feedback 1 Yes 2 No, although one might just possibly learn the meaning of battle from being shown a battle in a movie. Comment Some predicates which do not have clearly defined extensions e.
Thus the idea of prototype has at least some advantage over that of extension. But in other cases, such as abstract mass terms e. We conclude by repeating definitions of referent, extension, and prototype below.
Comment We make a distinction between prototype and stereotype: we will define stereotype in the next unit. In other texts, the two terms are often used interchangeably. In many cases denotation can be thought of as equivalent to extension. Thus, for example, the predicate cat can be said to denote the set of all cats. But often the term is used in a wider, essentially vaguer, sense, especially in connection with predicates whose extensions are problematical.
Summary Reference, extension, and prototype all focus attention on the relationship between words and things. Clearly, language does not exist in a vacuum.
It is used to make statements about the world outside, and these three notions are useful in an analysis of exactly how the relationship between language and the world works. In what way are sense and extension alike, and unlike reference?
In what way are extension and reference alike, and unlike sense? In other words, we noted that sense fixes determines extension. Explain as best you can in your own words. How can we restrict the extension of a predicate? Why not? What are fuzzy sets and how is this notion supposed to resolve the problem? Give your own example. What originally motivated the notion of an extension? Explain why the non-prototypical examples diverge from the prototype. How is it related to the learning of the meanings of certain expressions?
Think of some more examples not mentioned in the book. If you feel unfamiliar with any of these ideas, review the appropriate unit. Otherwise, take the entry test below. Entry test 1 Which of the following are two-place predicates?
Feedback 1 below, smother, annihilate, afraid of Extension 2 Referent Prototype If you have answered both questions correctly, continue to the introduction. This is a truism. If a person wants to hinder or obstruct communication, he can begin to quibble over the meanings of everyday words.
Practice Given below are three conversations which get stuck. In each one, speaker B seems to ignore some particular convention about the meaning of one of the words involved, a convention universally accepted in everyday English. For each conversation, write out a statement about the meaning of the word concerned, a statement that speaker B seems not to accept.
What was it? It was a cat. Just that I killed it. I was quite careful about it. Feedback 1 The meaning of cat includes that of animal. Comment The kind of meaning we are talking about here is obviously the kind associated with words and sentences by the language system, and not the speaker meaning see Unit 1 specifically associated with utterances made by speakers on particular occasions.
This kind of meaning we call sense. Thus it is problematic to talk of the senses of deictic words Unit 7 , but we will not go into that problem here. The sense of an expression can be thought of as the sum of its sense properties and sense relations with other expressions.
For the moment, we will concentrate on three important sense properties of sentences, the properties of being analytic, of being synthetic, and of being contradictory. An analytic sentence, therefore, reflects a tacit unspoken agreement by speakers of the language about the senses of the words in it.
Example Analytic: All elephants are animals The truth of the sentence follows from the senses of elephant and animal. Synthetic: John is from Ireland There is nothing in the senses of John or Ireland or from which makes this necessarily true or false.
Sentences c , d , g , h are synthetic. Practice Here are some more sentences. Circle A for analytic, or S for synthetic, as appropriate. For some, you will have to imagine relevant situations. We now come to contradiction. Thus a contradiction is in a way the opposite of an analytic sentence.
Example This animal is a vegetable is a contradiction. This must be false because of the senses of animal and vegetable. This must be false because of the senses of both parents, married, and aunt. Java 19 min ago 1.
JavaScript 52 min ago 0. Arduino 1 hour ago 0. We use cookies for various purposes including analytics. By continuing to use Pastebin, you agree to our use of cookies as described in the Cookies Policy. OK, I Understand.
0コメント