[humanmarkup-comment] RE: AW: [topicmaps-comment] multilingualthesaurus - language, scope, and topic naming constraint

[Rex Brooks <rexb@starbourne.com>]

Hi Everyone,

I have stayed out of this thread, despite a couple of times when I 
felt like responding to parts of some messages. This was largely due 
to the fact that I didn't have the time to follow it closely enough, 
nor research the areas I did not understand thoroughly enough to make 
my comments cogent, and constantly having to qualify my statements 
for specificity gets old fast.

Okay, having said that, the one ongoing point that I can respond to 
is this: for the purpose of HumanMarkup I believe,(this is a belief 
not an assertion of fact), that it is necessary for topics to include 
cross references to similarly translated concepts in as many language 
as feasible, perhaps as  a specific cross-language reference to 
associations, in order for ease of collecting divergent meanings for 
"similar" not identical, topics, as words or phrases. Whether one 
agrees with the idea that concepts/topics are language-specific or 
not is irrelevant to the job of collecting actual linguistic 
translations that are as close in meaning as possible,for which we 
can demonstrate and enumerate the differences.

That is one of the primary, and rather onerous tasks we have set for 
ourselves in HumanMarkup and we need Topic Maps to perform this 
function for us because it is outside the scope of our work per se. 
We need to elucidate these differences, and if we have to conduct 
independent searches to simply collect them, we are in a difficult if 
not outright impossible position.

Whether you define this need as late-binding or as based on some 
neurologically modeled system based on the human brain is also beyond 
our scope, though I am sure many of us would argue that we need to be 
very concerned and cognizant of these developments and arguments.

As a bit of humor, I very nearly committed a Freudian Typo--Topic Naps.

Proofreading is a good idea, too.

Ciao,
Rex

At 7:04 PM -0500 2/2/02, psp wrote:
>I think that everyone, reading this, understands that most of the discussion
>here is regarding the technical details of the Topic Maps standard and
>related issues.
>
>When one talks about thesaurus, and language scope, it is appropriate to
>remind ourselves that the notion of language scope is one that has a common
>understanding by individuals who are NOT working on the Topic Maps
>standard - but who might be or who are just users.
>
>These users are not interested in the various acronyms used here or the
>technical meanings that the topic map community places on various words -
>such as semantics.  What they are interested in, ultimately is whether or
>not the promise of Topic Maps is being or can be achieved.
>
>Whereas it is important to have a place to discuss these terms, perhaps it
>is just as important to pause and reflect sometimes, on whether or not the
>deep issues will resurface over and over again until somehow these deep
>issues are truly recognized.
>
>
>I am just reminding us, that the issue of what knowledge experience is, and
>what the scope of the meaning of a term or topic is; can not stray so far
>away from the common understanding so as to be unrecognizable.
>
>
>I apologize that I have pursued this issue to much.  It is important to me
>because I feel that a paradigm can be developed that would produce small
>topic maps (perhaps better to call them topic graphs), where the scope
>(defined in a natural way) of the topics as a small construct has a
>definition at the last moment.
>
>But the construction of only large topic structures and no easy-to-use
>browsers seems to be all that I can see.  Perhaps someone is working on
>something that can be shared?
>
>One might ask for a browser that converts between a XML type string to a
>GRAPH, and from a graph to an XML string, so that the XTM paradigm might be
>studied as a knowledge technology.. as opposed to encyclopedic work?
>
>
>
>
>-----Original Message-----
>From: Steven R. Newcomb [mailto:srn@coolheads.com]
>Sent: Saturday, February 02, 2002 8:08 PM
>To: psp
>Cc: Topicmaps-Comment; Humanmarkup-Comment; eventChemistry
>Subject: Re: AW: [topicmaps-comment] multilingual thesaurus - language,
>scope, and topic naming constraint
>
>
>Paul Prueitt "psp" <beadmaster@ontologystream.com> writes:
>
>>  You are saying
>>
>>  " We
>>      believed that, if a topic is supposed to be
>>      considered a member of a scope, then, by Golly, it
>>      should appear inside the corresponding <scope>
>>      element.  Otherwise, the syntax becomes
>>      unlearnable, because it is too tricky."
>
>>  But this is not how the brain works.  And the brain
>>  is the only system that can do knowledge processing
>>  at this time.  Somehow the brain has a by-pass that
>>  avoids the very problem that you say prevents late
>>  binding of scope.
>
>I'm baffled as to the relationship between what I was
>talking about and whatever it is that you're talking
>about.  I don't want your readers to think that I said
>the things that you're saying I said.
>
>I didn't say anything about the brain.  I did not
>mention a problem that prevents late binding of scope,
>since I don't know what "late binding of scope" means.
>I did not use the phrase "late binding" at all.
>
>I was talking about the XTM information interchange
>representation, and saying that it was designed to be
>as simple and intuitive as possible.  The person I was
>responding to had suggested that the value of the
>xml:lang attribute should be added to XTM and be
>considered to specify a scoping topic, even though this
>would make natural language topics the only class of
>topics that would not appear in the normal way within
>the content of the appropriate <scope> element.  I was
>saying that I didn't think that this suggestion was a
>good idea.  That's all.
>
>-- Steve
>
>Steven R. Newcomb, Consultant
>srn@coolheads.com
>
>voice: +1 972 359 8160
>fax:   +1 972 359 0270
>
>1527 Northaven Drive
>Allen, Texas 75002-1648 USA
>
>
>
>
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-- 
Rex Brooks
GeoAddress: 1361-A Addison, Berkeley, CA, 94702 USA, Earth
W3Address: http://www.starbourne.com
Email: rexb@starbourne.com
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