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Homer, the Author of The Iliad and the Computational-Linguistic Turn

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Words and Intelligence II

Part of the book series: Text, Speech and Language Technology ((TLTB,volume 36))

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This paper analyzes two sets of opposing opinions about the nature of meaning representations and knowledge resources. The first of these axes of disagreement is the opposition between an ineffable, “revealed” language of thought in the Fodor tradition and Wilks’ position that (using its strongest formulation) elements of the language of knowledge representation are essentially elements of a natural language. The second opposition is between a “scientifically” defined ontology, in Guarino’s sense, and human-oriented resources of knowledge about language, such as MRDs or WordNet. An attempt will be made to clarify some of the motivation behind these differing opinions. I will try to formulate my own positions on the above issues and will use as illustrations some modules of ontological semantics, a computationally-tractable theory of meaning, as implemented in the OntoSem text analyzer and the knowledge resources that support it

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Author information

Authors and Affiliations

  1. Institute for Language and Information Technologies, University of Maryland, Baltimore County, MD, USA

    Sergei Nirenburg

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  1. Sergei Nirenburg
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Editor information

Editors and Affiliations

  1. Trinity College, Dublin, Ireland

    Khurshid Ahmad

  2. University of Sheffield, Sheffield, UK

    Christopher Brewster

  3. University of Sheffield, Sheffield, UK

    Mark Stevenson

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Nirenburg, S. (2007). Homer, the Author of The Iliad and the Computational-Linguistic Turn. In: Ahmad, K., Brewster, C., Stevenson, M. (eds) Words and Intelligence II. Text, Speech and Language Technology, vol 36. Springer, Dordrecht. https://doi.org/10.1007/1-4020-5833-0_9

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