Buscar en Mind w/o Soul

jueves, abril 26, 2007

Abstracto vs instanciado

Artículo que reflexiona sobre los niveles de referencia de palabras homónimas, clase/instancia. Describe la semántica de la idea que quiero representar con la herramienta de mi tesis.

http://www.martinfowler.com/bliki/TypeInstanceHomonym.html


TypeInstanceHomonym

"'War and Peace' is a wonderful book.
"Let me see... pity this book has such a tattered cover"

Two sentences, each uses the word 'book'. We glance over combinations like this every day without remarking that the word 'book' means something completely different in each of those sentences.


The really interesting thing about this ambiguity is how little trouble it causes. Humans seem to have no trouble at all switching between the multiple concepts and only rarely getting tripped up in the process. What's worse, if you actively try to use different terms in everyday conversation, it's nearly impossible to keep it up. I certainly tried, both in conversation and writing and quickly realized it was a lost cause. Not just did I not have the discipline but it made me sound like someone with some obscure mental condition. (The type-instance case isn't the only one with this property, as the phrase "go through the door we painted last week" suggests.)

No hay comentarios: