A Dynamic Theory of Ontology

Natural languages are easy to learn by infants, they can express any thought that any adult might ever conceive, and they accommodate the limitations of human breathing rates and short-term memory. The first property implies a finite vocabulary, the second implies infinite extensibility, and the third implies a small upper bound on the length of phrases. Together, they imply that most words in a natural language will have an open-ended number of senses -- ambiguity is inevitable. Peirce and Wittgenstein are two philosophers who understood that vagueness and ambiguity are not defects in language, but essential properties that enable it to accommodate anything and everything that people need to say. In analyzing the ambiguities, Wittgenstein developed his theory of language games, which allow words to have different senses in different contexts, applications, or modes of use. Recent developments in lexical semantics, which are remarkably compatible with the views of Peirce and Wittgenste...

• Type: Conference
• Year: 2006
• Where: FOIS
• Authors: John F. Sowa
• Keywords: FOIS 2006, FOIS 2008, Implies Infinite Extensibility, Natural Language, Open-ended Number