> John Cowan's last message about lexicons (referring
> to
> an article about how implementing a lexicon in Perl
> -
> quite interesting from a technical point of view)
> brought back a wide question to my mind: what is
> definition ?
>
> Hundreds of books have been written on the topic, of
> course, but what I would like to understand clearly,
> to start with, has been studied by Pustejovsky I
> think. As far as I remember, he used Aristote's
> theory
> of the qualia. I read pages and pages about it, but
> at
> the moment, the only thing I can remember (true,
> it's
> early Sunday morning) is that:
>
> - you can define a concept using a "sort-of"
> operator
> (a mouse is a sort, or kind of, mammal, etc)
>
> - you can define it by its goal, or use (a rake is
> an
> artefact used to..., etc)
>
> There were two more qualia, among them an
> "agent"
> if I remember, but I can't think of any concrete
> examples (maybe: a postman is a human being whose
> function is to deliver mail ???). Mayve I just mixed
> up everything and it's not that at all.
>
> So if somebody could explain me the whole thing in a
> few simple words, it would be great. My concern is:
>
> 1/ to understand the point of this qualia thing
>
> 2/ to clearly understand each one of the 4 qualia,
> to
> judge whether from my point of view they are
> relevant
> or not, to understand why there are 4 of them and
> not
> 3 or 12 for ex.
>
> 3/ to see if this ca
>
>
>
>
>
> =====
> Philippe Caquant
>
> "High thoughts must have high language."
> (Aristophanes, Frogs)
>
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