[om-list] OM and Mathesis are interlinguas

[Thomas L. Packer at home]

Hello OM people

    To make a long letter short ... (I was about to write a many-page one, but ... I had better not).

    I just realised that my long term dream project is one of the hardest and potentially most useful challenges in linguistics. This was news to me, not because I found out that it was challenging or useful, but because it was already a well known challenge in linguistics.  I guess I assumed that since it hadn't been done yet that it wasn't well known and that most people didn't realise the benefit it would provide.  

    My desire has been, for many years, to create a unified model of knowledge, just like the rest of you.  Talking to my boss, it's a bit more clear to me how this goal is equivalent to inventing an "interlingua" which he says has been attempted many times in the past -- always unsuccessfully.  (It is also called the "pivot" approach to translation, as opposed to the "transfer" or direct approach of translating one language into another.)

    I'm thinking attempting it myself, or at least attempting some big first step towards creating an interlingua, as my master thesis.  I'm excited.  Ironically, after an hour of being told that it would be virtually impossible for me to do such a thing, I feel good about it.  I think the reason for this is, all the reasons he gave me for why this challenge is so challenging were things I have already considered.  (But then the reason could just as easily be my egomaniacal personality. :-)

    We shall see what happens.

tomp

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Víðar sum quem nihil obstat.
www.Ontolog.Com
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