[Attempto] counting, maximum, sums

[Jean-Marc Vanel]

2010/12/4 Norbert E. Fuchs <fuchs at ifi.uzh.ch>

>
> On 4 Dec 2010, at 14:11, Jean-Marc Vanel wrote:
>
> > 2010/12/4 Norbert E. Fuchs <fuchs at ifi.uzh.ch>:
> > ...
> > >
> > >  If the number of the parts of a product X is N then the number of the
> workers of X is N.
> > >
> > ...
> > In order to capture the semantics of the sentence, what is desirable is
> that a DRS variable binds the cardinality of the "part" object to that of
> the "worker" object.
> > ...
>
> Why? From your example it seems that you want the "number of the parts" to
> equal "the number of the workers". The cardinality "geq 2" of "parts" and
> "workers" reflects simply that these words are plural.
>

On the surface the ACE interpretation of the sentence makes sense, but it
misses the common sense ( and also set theoretic sense )  about the
cardinaty of 2 sets being equal.
The word "number" applied to object "part" is indeed equal to the word
"number" applied to object "worker". But number is just a word in the user's
vocabulary; it does not have the meaning of a set's cardinality.

I acknowledge that a software application can leverage on that and exploit
the DRS, but this is not satisfying because this relies on a private
semantics shared by the author of the ACE sentences and the software.

What I want to explore is the possibility extend ACE and DRS to capture such
meaning.
Let 's take again our ACE  sentence :

*If the number of the parts of a product X is N then the number of the
workers of X is N.*

If now "*the number of*" is interpreted as "the cardinality of the set of",
we could have this (extended ) DRS , where the new variable CD stands for
the cardinality of the set of the D's .

[]
   [D,E,CD]
   relation(D,of,E)-1/7
  object(E,product,countable,na,eq,1)-1/9
   *object(D,part,countable,na,eq, CD )-1/6*
   =>
  [H]
  relation(H,of,E)-1/19
   *object(H,worker,countable,na,eq, CD )-1/18*


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Jean-Marc Vanel
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