2008/08/08 by Walid S. Saba, Saba, Walid S.
Computer Science · #Artificial Intelligence (cs.AI) #Computation and Language (cs.CL) #FOS: Computer and information sciences #Logic, Reasoning, and Knowledge #Natural Language Processing Techniques #Semantic Web and Ontologies
paper · pdf · doi:10.48550/arxiv.0808.1211
openalex publication_date 2008/08/08 · openalex created_date 2025/10/10 · openalex updated_date 2026/07/28
Over two decades ago a "quite revolution" overwhelmingly replaced knowledgebased approaches in natural language processing (NLP) by quantitative (e.g., statistical, corpus-based, machine learning) methods. Although it is our firm belief that purely quantitative approaches cannot be the only paradigm for NLP, dissatisfaction with purely engineering approaches to the construction of large knowledge bases for NLP are somewhat justified. In this paper we hope to demonstrate that both trends are partly misguided and that the time has come to enrich logical semantics with an ontological structure that reflects our commonsense view of the world and the way we talk about in ordinary language. In this paper it will be demonstrated that assuming such an ontological structure a number of challenges in the semantics of natural language (e.g., metonymy, intensionality, copredication, nominal compounds, etc.) can be properly and uniformly addressed.