[Attempto] or is interpreted as inclusive or , or xor?

[Norbert E. Fuchs]

On 11 Jul 2010, at 18:29, George Herson wrote:

> A brilliant solution, agreed, but something that requires brilliance is only 
> usable by the consistently brilliant.  I would like to see a tool that allows 
> users to paste in normal English and stepwise translate it into ACE.  Unless 
> that's known to be too difficult it would also be really interesting (and thesis 
> worthy) to try.  

George

Your proposal does not fall into the category "too difficult", but plainly into the category "impossible". Normal English and controlled English, like ACE, are completely different beasts. 

Let me give you four reasons for my statement.

1. ACE is a first-order logical language that uses part of the English syntax. Being first-order means that the language is only on one level. English, however, is multi-level. It allows for instance, that a sentence talks about itself.

2. ACE does not use any context besides preceding noun phrases to resolve anaphors. English cannot be correctly understood without referring to context. 

3. ACE is not ambiguous. Any ACE sentence – that read as English sentence might appear ambiguous – has but one parsing. English is highly ambiguous and you need context to resolve ambiguity.

4. In ACE words are processed as uninterpreted symbols, while in English words carry a meaning.

> Attempto, its authors will agree, is an existance proof that 
> audacious experiments can resolve in the affirmative.

ACE is not a replacement for English but a formal knowledge representation language that can be processed by a computer and read by anybody.

Regards.

   --- nef