[Attempto] relation(var1,of,var2) with var2 inexistant.

[Norbert E. Fuchs]

> On 31 May 2018, at 13:54 , Pierre-Alexandre Voye <ontologiae at gmail.com> wrote:
> 
> Working around some sentences taken from "ACE described by itself", i get a strange result : the second variable to which relation refer doesn't exist.
> 
> Here the two sentences, I simplified :
> 
> There are some users.
> They prefer to use a formal method in their own natural language.
> 
> The drs resulted :
> 
> drspp>[A,B,C]
> object(A,user,countable,na,geq,2)-1/4
> predicate(B,prefer,A,C)-2/2
>    C
>    [D,E,F]
>    object(D,method,countable,na,eq,1)-2/7
>    property(D,formal,pos)-2/6
>    relation(E,of,G)-2/9
>    object(E,language,countable,na,eq,1)-2/12
>    property(E,natural,pos)-2/11
>    predicate(F,use,A,D)-2/4
>    modifier_pp(F,in,E)-2/8
> </drspp>
> 
> We can see that the variable G, used in relation(E,of,G)-2/9 doesn't exist.


Pierre-Alexandre

As it seems you have found an error – possibly caused by an incorrect resolution of the anaphor "their own" – located within the compacted subordinated sentence "They prefer to use ..." (see Construction Rules, Section 3.4.4.5). 

This error disappears when you rephrase the sentence as 

	They prefer that they use a formal method in their own natural language.

which is not as compact but generates the expected DRS.

Almost 10 years after the publication of "ACE can be described by itself" it is no longer possible to know whether this error existed already in the version of APE that we had in 2009.

Best regards.

   --- nef