Re: Order & meaning in a proposition

On Tue, 6 Apr 2004 13:00:55 -0500, "Dawn M. Wolthuis" <dwolt_at_tincat-group.com> wrote:

>"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

Believe me, I'm glad to have even got 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.

I'm curious what modelling methods retain sufficient information that such nuances are captured in the final model. Do any such methods exist?

Lemming

-- 
Curiosity *may* have killed Schrodinger's cat.