Human and Machine Understanding Of Natural Language Character Strings
- DOI
- 10.2991/agi.2009.27How to use a DOI?
- Abstract
There is a great deal of variability in the way in which different language users understand a given natural language (NL) character string. This variability probably arises because of some combination of differences in language users' perceptions of its context-of-use (pragmatics), identity and mode of organization of its meaning bearing parts (syntax), and in the meanings assigned to those parts (semantics). This paper proposes a formalization of the syntax and semantics of NL character strings within a logical framework which is sufficiently flexible to represent the full breadth of possible ways of understanding NL character strings as influenced by different contexts-of use, beyond what can be represented in currently used predicate-logic-based frameworks. While the question of how language users understand NL character strings is ultimately a question in the psychology of language, it appears to us that, for the purposes of AGI, that question needs to be addressed within a logical framework which explicitly identifies the syntactic and semantic components that comprise that understanding, and which account in formal terms for differences in that understanding. Such a logical framework would provide a formal basis not only on which to address further psychological issues regarding human language understanding, but also for coherently imparting such understanding to machines.
- Copyright
- © 2009, the Authors. Published by Atlantis Press.
- Open Access
- This is an open access article distributed under the CC BY-NC license (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/).
Cite this article
TY - CONF AU - Peter G. Tripodes PY - 2009/06 DA - 2009/06 TI - Human and Machine Understanding Of Natural Language Character Strings BT - Proceedings of the 2nd Conference on Artificial General Intelligence (2009) PB - Atlantis Press SP - 120 EP - 125 SN - 1951-6851 UR - https://doi.org/10.2991/agi.2009.27 DO - 10.2991/agi.2009.27 ID - Tripodes2009/06 ER -