Stephen,
Fighting comeback :). But then how do you get from "hell" etc to people patting him etc to his walking achingly to a dressing-room to discarding bits of "apparatus" to "a tie-up" to "clamping down on a water bottle" to " A camera zooming in.." to him looking like a movie character (& why, if you've seen the movie, will you & I probably remember the same shot, that we've never heard talked about), to understanding what "a replay showing on his face etc.." means? It is an awesomely difficult passage if you're trying to process it. And the reason I'm dwelling on it, is because it's so fascinating - it actually barely illustrates my particular, earlier point re movement trajectories (though that is still valid). If you really want to understand how language works - that's a movie scene, with changing shots and POV's, being put together from, in some cases, purely visual, movie sequences in memory (including The Long Good Friday final scene). And I think that actually IS how language and the brain works. It's basically a movie editor. (Even when you think you're doing nothing else but looking at a symbolic equation, "2 + 2 =4" it's still being projected on the movie screen of your consciousness, as Damasio insists). The syntax of those sentences is the same syntax that binds this sequence together: http://faculty.cua.edu/johnsong/hitchcock/pages/stills-NxNW/UN3.html And it's the same syntax that will probably allow your brain to understand a set of non-sentences like: "Morning. Frozen breath. Train. Boring Mondays. Crowds surging. Doors clattering. Sitting down. Newspapers rustling." Do you really think a purely verbal processor can stay with all that? Hi Mike, "John Arne Riise stood doubled over in his tiny corner of football hell." These sentences are great demonstrations of why I favor a construction grammar. It's not necessary to process the imagery from first principles. These sentences are full of idioms that can be simply treated as constructions (i.e. form <--> meaning pairs). a.. doubled over -- from WordNet: bent over or curled up, usually with laughter or pain b.. corner of X hell -- a very uncomfortable situation involving X c.. tiny corner of X hell -- very uncomfortable situation involving X in which the agent (i.e. John Arne Riise) does not share the situation with anyone else ...and so forth for the rest of the passage. The downside of construction grammar is lots of constructions. But human children learn them, by being taught and by observation / induction , so I think a dialog system can too. This sort of text by the way, long ago put an end to the Cyc Project's then ambition to read and comprehend an article in a newspaper. Texai may fail also, but certainly not in the same way Cyc did. -Steve Stephen L. Reed Artificial Intelligence Researcher http://texai.org/blog http://texai.org 3008 Oak Crest Ave. Austin, Texas, USA 78704 512.791.7860 ----- Original Message ---- From: Mike Tintner <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> To: [email protected] Sent: Wednesday, April 23, 2008 8:07:13 PM Subject: Re: [agi] Why Symbolic Representation P.S. Abram, Just to illustrate further, here's the opening lines of today's Times sports report on a football match.[Liverpool v Chelsea] How on earth could this be understood without massive imaginative simulation? [Stephen?] And without mainly imaginative memories of football matches? "John Arne Riise stood doubled over in his tiny corner of football hell. Agony engulfed him. One by one, teammates offered a pat on the back, a handshake, or just a touch, some form of human contact to show they cared. None of it did much good. He walked, step by aching step, to the sanctuary of the dressing-room, discarding bits of the apparatus of the professional footballer as he went. A tie-up here, a shin pad there. He clamped down on his water bottle and held it between his teeth, like a bit to stop him gnawing through his bottom lip. A camera zoomed in to show muscles around his eyes and mouth tensing as his mind worked overtime. He looked like Harold Shand being driven to his execution in the final scenes of The Long Good Friday. A replay of every mistake he had made to get there was showing on his face." ------------------------------------------- agi Archives: http://www.listbox.com/member/archive/303/=now RSS Feed: http://www.listbox.com/member/archive/rss/303/ Modify Your Subscription: http://www.listbox.com/member/?&; Powered by Listbox: http://www.listbox.com ------------------------------------------------------------------------------ Be a better friend, newshound, and know-it-all with Yahoo! Mobile. 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