[Attempto] Object Ops, eq vs exactly?

[Norbert E. Fuchs]

On 31 Mar 2009, at 01:15, David Whitten wrote:

> Notes below...
>
>> On Mon, Mar 30, 2009 at 10:57 AM, Kaarel Kaljurand <kaljurand at gmail.com 
>> > wrote:
>> Hi,
>>
>> On Mon, Mar 30, 2009 at 4:40 PM, David Whitten
>> <david.whitten.cyc at gmail.com> wrote:
>> > Has there been any discussion about handling "just" in Attempto:
>> > i.e.:
>> >
>> > Every American has just one President.
>> >
>> > It seems to be a way to differentiate between
>> >
>> > Every American has one mother.
>> > and
>> > Every American has one President.
>> >
>> > I guess other examples would be
>> >
>> > The team has just one leader
>> > Each organization has just one headquarters.
>>
>> "just" is currently supported (in APE's built-in lexicon)
>> as an adverb, i.e. a content word
>> with now particular semantics. I.e. one can say:
>>
>> John owns a car just.
>> John just owns a car.
>
> The first sentence doesn't really make since to me, and I do agree
> the second use is an adverb (modifying a verb) to limit the range
> of the verb to owning a car and nothing more, perhaps in a context
> where someone else owns a car, a mansion and a yacht.
>
> I do want to mention that as I was taught "adverbs", the use
> of the word "just" to modify an adjective "one" is totally  
> appropriate.
> Does your note mean that the parser can't handle adverbs that
> modify adjectives ?

This is correct, in ACE adverbs can only modify verbs, not adjectives.

> (I'm not sure what a "now particular semantics" means)

This seems to be a typo. Kaarel obviously wanted to write "with no  
particular semantics".

>> These sentences are syntactically OK, but probably misleading,
>> so maybe we should
>> remove "just" from the lexicon and declare these sentences syntax
>> errors. (Of course, users can reintroduce "just" in their user  
>> lexicon.)
>>
>> ACE does offer "exactly" and "nothing but" as function words.
>> These words seem to cover some (semantic) aspects of "just".

... in the sense of "only" which we do not allow in ACE because it is  
highly ambiguous.

>> Every American has exactly one President.
>> Every koala eats nothing but eucalypt-leaves.
>>
>> I guess we have considered "just" to be too ambiguous to force it
>> into a single meaning...
>
> I don't consider it ambiguous, however it is a usage that may not be  
> part
> of your original design.

This is a tricky point that I will elaborate a little bit. ACE relies  
on a sharing of work between APE that checks syntactical correctness,   
and humans who provide lexical semantics and possibly disambiguation  
to content words (nouns, verbs, adjectives, adverbs). While some  
content words, for instance the noun "bank", are so to speak "locally"  
ambiguous, other content words, specifically adverbs like "only" and  
"just" can spread their ambiguity in various ways over the complete  
sentence. After a long discussion concerning "only", we decided to  
eliminate the adverb "only" from the built-in lexicon, and to provide  
instead the constructs "nothing but" and "nobody but" that seem to  
have a more restricted semantics. As Kaarel pointed out, perhaps we  
should also eliminate the adverb "just" from the built-in lexicon.  
However, every user is free to add words like "only" and "just" via a  
user lexicon.

Regards.

    --- nef