SUO: Re: Re: Time, context, and relations
From: John F. Sowa <sowa@bestweb.net>
<snip>"There existed
> a situation of a cat on a mat at the point in time 2001 Jan 11
> 16:12:05 UCT at the latitude 73W 53' 35" and longitude 41N 12' 27"
> as reported by the person John F. Sowa."
This sentence happens to remind of a suggestion by Rick Briggs that Shastrik
Sanskrit might make a reasonable KR language.
Knowledge Representation in Sanskrit and Artificial Intelligence
Rick Briggs
AI Magazine 6(1): Spring 1985, 32-39
Here is the abstract found at
http://www.aaai.org//Library/Magazine/Vol06/06-01/vol06-01.html
(unfortunately, the full text does not appear to be available)
"In the past twenty years., much time, effort, and money has been expended
on designing an unambiguous representation of natural language to make them
accessible to computer processing, These efforts have centered around
creating schemata designed to parallel logical relations with relations
expressed by the syntax and semantics of natural languages, which are
clearly cumbersome and ambiguous in their function as vehicles for the
transmission of logical data. Understandably, there is a widespread belief
that natural languages are unsuitable for the transmission of many ideas
that artificial languages can render with great precision and mathematical
rigor.
But this dichotomy, which has served as a premise underlying much work in
the areas of linguistics and artificial intelligence, is a false one. There
is at least one language, Sanskrit, which for the duration of almost 1000
years was a living spoken language with a considerable literature of its
own. Besides works of literary value, there was a long philosophical and
grammatical tradition that has continued to exist with undiminished vigor
until the present century. Among the accomplishments of the grammarians can
be reckoned a method for paraphrasing Sanskrit in a manner that is identical
not only in essence but in form with current work in Artificial
Intelligence. This article demonstrates that a natural language can serve as
an artificial language also, and that much work in AI has been reinventing a
wheel millenia old.
First, a typical Knowledge Representation Scheme (using Semantic Nets) will
be laid out, followed by an outline of the method used by the ancient Indian
grammarians to analyze sentences unambiguously. Finally, the clear
parallelism between the two will be demonstrated, and the theoretical
implications of this equivalence will be given. "
Jack
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