[Attempto] Why are these 2 sentences incorrect for APE ?

[Norbert E. Fuchs]

> On 19 Jun 2016, at 23:13 , Vijay Saraswat <vijay at saraswat.org> wrote:
> 
> Would we be able to fix the grammar so that these are acceptable:
> 
> > John has money.
> > John sells goods.
> 
> Arguably, |John sells some goods| is implied by |John sells goods|, but not the other way around. 
> 
> Arguably, if a human knows |John sells goods|, s/he would conclude that the probability of |John teaches category theory| is low. 
> 
> i.e. |John sells goods| tells the listener what John does for a living, whereas |John sells some goods| is compatible with him doing so casually. 

Vijay

With your proposal you are opening a can of worms.

What you propose are called generic nouns that are highly ambiguous – which is not noted in the daily use of English where the ambiguity is usually resolved by the context in which the generic noun appears. To show this ambiguity let's use the sentence

  Goods are valuable.

Among the meanings of this sentence are "All goods are valuable." and "Goods per se are valuable."

In a non-ambiguous controlled language like ACE this semantic ambiguity has no place. This is why we require that every common noun and every measurement noun has a determiner. 

By the way the trouble-shooting guide that Kaarel cited 

> See also http://attempto.ifi.uzh.ch/site/docs/ace_troubleshooting.html (which contains: "Every noun needs a determiner.", "Do not use nouns without a determiner.") 

should actually read "Every common noun and every every measurement noun needs a determiner." There are other nouns (proper names, numbers, numerical expressions, strings, sets, lists, variables, pronouns) that do not have determiners.

Best wishes from the Sicilian island Marettimo where I now start for a hike.

   --- nef