Samuel Johnson + Google Translate: context not index is what we need and semantics still has leaps of i.t. to make
Three serendipitous events happened yesterday (08 February 2010) which sparked a personal “Eureka!” / Epiphany moment, so I’d like to record them here:
(1.) My mother discussed how English dictionaries, whilst seemingly logical in their alphabetical listings, are actually incoherently ordered.
The same is true of Chinese dictionaries — albeit there we’re dealing with the number of brushstrokes which demarcates where a character is listed rather than any alphabetical primacy.
Even online resources are not as coherently ordered as they could be.
(2.) My friend GC and I discussed the difference between doing something for fame and doing something with purpose: the instant gratification versus legacy principle.
(3.) I showed my mother some of the Italian grammar tables I’ve been constructing and converting into an online database — which I’ll write a search and structure script for once I have all 5,000+ verbs captured.
We’ve been comparing the learning challenges of different languages and about semantics/semiotics generally. Her position is that the English language is the most difficult. This is quite LOL since most Westerners believe the Chinese language is impossibly oblique to grasp. My position is that neither English nor Chinese are as grammatically complex as the Latin languages.
Since my mother doesn’t know any Latin languages she kept fighting her corner for English.
Anyway, whilst I was taking her over the 15 (FIFTEEN!!!) different tenses in French-Spanish-Italian-Portuguese and their rules about subjunctives, imperfect tenses, gender agreements, progressives, prepositions and……..CONNECTORS………
(And watching her eyes enlarge and then glaze over because it was simply mind-boggling to her that with Latin languages we’re dealing with 15 different tenses that affect the verb conversions — one each for the 8 objective pronouns of I, you, etc……)
I HAD THIS EUREKA MOMENT THAT’S RELATED TO SEMANTICS AND THE 360-2020® TOOLS: I NEED TO CODE A DICTIONARY THAT’S DIFFERENT FROM THE WAY SAMUEL JOHNSON AND GOOGLE INDEX THEIR WORDS!!!
(NB: As shown above, Google Translate is wrong yet again. I wrote: “I am a dictionary of life.” GT gave: “My life dictionary.”)
No, the dictionary I have in mind is not about adding semantic layers on top of existing structures or even FOAF. It’s about taking those original logic root alphabetical structures apart and converting them into natural, organic context mechanisms. Logic root approaches are pre-determining what we can currently do with FOAF and is actually making it limited as a contributing framework, from my perspective. “The Semantic Web is a step in the right direction but we’re carrying a sub-optimal tool kit to venture into foreign language terrains…..” that’s my analogy for the situation. Even in an English-speaking terrain the compass can only tell us which is North-South-East-West (direction) and therefore where the wind’s coming from, but the compass has no perception of how cold that wind is or why we keep walking into the wind.
LOL!
The legacy principle is a simple one:
Fame is fleeting, synchronicity is timely and realization is progress — (C) Twain, 2010.
