[Attempto] ambiguous prefixes in APE

[Norbert E. Fuchs]

On 24 Jun 2010, at 17:37, Jean-Marc Vanel wrote:

> I'm running this, after installing the clex-6.5-090528.zip. By the
> way, why isn't it part of the standard APE distribution ?

Some users of APE may want to use their own lexicon instead of clex that is a relatively large download.

> ./ape.exe -guess -text 'Every material that contains some cement and
> some n:aggregate is some concrete.' -solo drspp
> 
> Here aggregate is considered as countable by APE. However, I intend
> this WordNet synset :
> 
> 2. aggregate -- (material such as sand or gravel used with cement and
> water to make concrete, mortar, or plaster)
> 
> I would like to say something like:
> some m:aggregate
> to flag a mass noun. But this does not work. Is there another way?

Here the problem is that "aggregate" occurs in clex as countable noun. Perhaps prefixing it with "some n: " should allow users to redefine it as mass noun. I do not know whether the current situation should be called a feature or a bug. For a solution see below.

Countable and mass nouns are distinguished by their determiners. You can write, for instance, "John has some water. Mary has a water." where both meanings are in clex. Thus a prefix "m" does not seem to be necessary. Well, this is not quite true since the determiner "no" is ambiguous between countable and mass, for instance in "no water" that always get a countable interpretation.

> And why in the first place did APE specify ambiguous prefixes like a:
> for adjectives OR adverbs ?

There is no ambiguity since adjectives and adverbs are distinguished by their position within a sentence.

> I know that I can add in the lexicon :
> noun_mass(aggregate, aggregate, neutr).
> but wouldn't that clash with the other sense of aggregate which is countable?

No, it wouldn't. See the example "water" in clex.

> Related to that, is there some way to disambiguate different meanings of a word?

ACE treats words as uninterpreted symbols, thus for instance does not distinguish between the different semantics of the word "bank". A possible way out could be – like in Chinese – to add distinguishing words, "money-bank", "river-bank" etc.

Which kind of meaning would you want to distinguish? 

Regards.

   --- nef