tough nuts

schubert@cs.rochester.edu

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Date: Thu, 7 Jun 90 15:08:27 -0400
From: schubert@cs.rochester.edu
Message-id: <9006071908.AA01345@ash.cs.rochester.edu>
To: interlingua@venera.isi.edu
Subject: tough nuts
Cc: kr-standards@vaxa.isi.edu



TEN "TOUGH NUTS" FOR A GENERAL KR
---------------------------------

Note: Many of the examples that follow are fairly directly representable
      in certain emerging episodic/situational/intensional/type-theoretic
      representations geared towards natural language. If translation 
      from those representations to the interlingua requires complex
      case-by-case circumlocutions, it is unlikely that KB's based on 
      them will be readily sharable via the interlingua.

1. EVENTS, TIMES AND CAUSES

   a. Company ABC has been manufacturing product X for three months.

   b. Every company in region XYZ laid off some workers in May 1990,
      causing the level of unemployment in XYZ to rise by 3%.

   c. Company ABC sold no supercomputers in May 1990, causing a drop
      in the value of its shares.

2. UNCERTAINTY

   a. Company XYZ is likely to fold next month (July 1990).

   b. If company ABC has no sales this month (June 1990), it will
      probably fold next month. 

3. UNRELIABLE GENERALIZATIONS

   a. When a company releases a new product, it usually advertises it.

   b. Computer programs with more than 2000 lines of code almost
      always contain bugs.

4. GENERALIZED QUANTIFIERS

   a. Most/many/few of the subsidiaries of ABC_CORP are located in
      California.

5. KINDS

   a. A dodo is a kind of flightless bird. This kind of bird was
      sometimes sighted in Mauritius, but is now extinct.

   b. Some makes of automobiles with rotary engines are popular.

   c. The cloth on this sofa is no longer being manufactured.

6. SETS

   a. Smith, Green, and 18 other individuals pooled their assets
      and formed a company.

   b. The "nuclear club" (the set of nations possessing nuclear
      weapons) has at least 6 and at most 10 members. The known
      members are the USA, the USSR, France, (etc.)

   c. The actual number of people carrying the HIV virus is at least 
      twice the number of known carriers.

7. NOMINALIZATION

   a. Concealing profits is illegal.

   b. To conceal profits is illegal.

   c. For a company to conceal profits is illegal.

8. MODIFIERS

   a. User interface X degrades gracefully on mildly faulty inputs.

   b. The interlingua is a highly expressive knowledge representation.

   c. The new highway runs through the ABC mountains, alongside the
      much older railroad tracks.

9. MODALS

   a. Company ABC suspects that a competitor obtained a copy of its
      (ABC's) unreleased product X.

   b. Company ABC intends to force company XYZ to sell its assets.

   c. If company ABC had not sold its subsidiary XYZ, it would have
      gone bankrupt.

10. OTHER FORMS OF INTENSIONALITY

   a. Company ABC is seeking new customers.

   b. Company ABC is designing a new supercomputer.

   c. The new memory chip X resembles a 128-level Mayan pyramid.