| This second section on ontology continues with the object entities designated by proper nouns begun in the previous one. It then continues with the ontology of MultiNet and finally outlines features of the determiner, which helps to provide a grounding for nouns in English. |
Abstract objects.Figure 9 gives possible classes for some of the many abstract objects that might have instances for which proper nouns have been applied as designators. I have put some of the aspects of culture together as cultural manifestations. Many of the members of these classes may optionally appear with a definite article the. The class of ideal objects, although being often spoken of as abstract, seem regularly to have a physical manifestation, so that they are interpreted either way, according to context. |
Inanimate, movable objects.The objects included in figure 10 are concrete, discrete, but movable, designating instruments created or devised for some purpose or extra-terrestrial objects discovered to have distinctive properties. The use of “instrumental” as distinctive is a bit problematic. Sometimes the objects of study become themselves tools through observation, so that in paleontology a natural fossil (movable) becomes an instrument. In geology land forms (immovable) are unavoidably instruments to measure time. In astronomy the movement of the earth or other body may become the instrument to measure another’s relative movement. Typically, however, instruments contrast with plants and localities, which are, of course, normally stationary. |
Localities.The objects represented on figure 11 designate intances of places located on the surface of the earth (a locality). Those classed as edifices are all artificial, i.e., built by man, yet caves and sets of caves could possibly be classed here as natural and anthropologists have assigned names to some of them. Most localities can usually be divided between artificial and natural instances. (Some buildings may be moved, and some other edifices are actually vehicles.) The natural areal place called “Heaven” might by some be more logically assigned a “supernatural” place. MultiNet would probably set the “factuality” feature to irrealis as it does with unicorn and yeti. Our position is to remain agnostic with respect to the existence of intensional entities in general, leaving this feature to be set by science with their mathematical models at the pre-extensional level of analysis. In our approach the features of realis, irrealis, and hypothesis belong to situations relating to mental content (about which later). It is probably instructive also to note that a cross-classification of topographic and hydrographic with terrestrial is also possible, since there are also named topological features on other worlds, e.gg., Moon (lunar), Mars (Martian), etc. Also note that watercourse is here merely a hydrographic path, which is abstracted elsewhere as a via (cf. Scientific Approach and Languages of Science). |
| This concludes the general overview of proper nouns in some of their various semantic classes. |
Situations & their descriptors.Distinct from nouns that designate conceptual objects are the other parts of speech that designate concepts for other entities. I have not developed the various subclasses and cross-classes for these concepts. Figure 12 lists MultiNet’s three important classes of situations designated by verbs to which night be added many subclasses based on the semantics of their typical subjects, objects and other complements. The careful study of syntax will reveal quite a few verbs used to designate abstract situations, e.g., aspect, temporality, relationship, attribution, etc. Some very important verbs used in numerous senses, like have (associative) and be (attributive) are notably absent, because MultiNet interprets them directly as elemental relations. The adverbs that typically modify the verbs that designate situations are called situation descriptors. It is much more common in English for the adverbial function to be handled by prepositional phrases and dependent clauses. |
Qualities & graduators.MultiNet classifies a quality and a graduator as on the bottom of figure 12. The measurable qualities are those that actually have standard measurements which have usually been assigned to them by science and technology. The non-measurable qualities are still gradable, i.e., can be modified by a graduator like very, but they don’t normally have a unit of measurement associated with them. Any property may be attributed to conceptual objects using a predicative construction, even the relational qualities, but the functional ones are attributed only by preposing the adjective to the noun. Principally the graduators are modifiers of the properties: the qualitative for any of them and quantitative for the total ones. |
Layer attributes & reference.As should be clear from this introduction to ontology, MultiNet assigns many of the concepts of English directly as attributes to the entity node being classified. A good many expressions of English involve the aspects of quantification, generality, extensionality, factuality (assertion), instantiation, and other pre-extensional attributes. These aspects of the interpretation of an expression inevitably involve the context of the utterance. In addition, many of them relate directly to considerations for modeling an entity as a mathematical construct, such as science requires. Furthermore, they are often involved in cross-classifying many different sorts of entities. MultiNet puts any such semantic features in what it calls “layer attributes,” since they cut across so many different classes. The final ontological chart of this section (figure 13) enumerates the various words used in appropriate contexts to refer directly to the conceptual object in English at the pre-extensional level. One of the forms of the determiner is almost always associated with any topic of discourse. Notice at the bottom that the two abstract quantities of figure 5 are repeated here now as means of reference (pronoun or limiting adjective). |
