Re: Order & meaning in a proposition

"Lemming" <thiswillbounce_at_bumblbee.demon.co.uk> wrote in message news:gjo570h5osc09f9mab31picaml0fiaco28_at_4ax.com...
> On Tue, 06 Apr 2004 17:57:56 +0100, Lemming
> <thiswillbounce_at_bumblbee.demon.co.uk> wrote:
>
> >The point of contention seems to be that since the President was
> >mentioned in the statement before the Secretary of the Interior, then
> >the President must have been seated first. It could simply be though
> >that the writer felt that the President is more important than the
> >Secretary, and so should be mentioned first. The writer need not even
> >have known the order of seating in order for the statement to be
> >written exactly as is.
>
> D'Oh, I get it now. Because a statement could have multiple
> interpretations, when we model it we risk losing one or more of those
> interpretations.

Close, very close - it is not just when we model it, but depending on how we model it -- we can lose more with one model than another. Data models are important for being able to apply predicate logic for querying the data, for example. But a data model that captures the ordering of compound nouns in a proposition retains more information (even if not obviously more data) than one that randomly orders the nouns.
Cheers! --dawn Received on Tue Apr 06 2004 - 20:00:55 CEST