Multiple Parents

We have been looking at how many connections will be required to connect the actual word, part of speech and definition. The answer is a problem.

For verbs and plural nouns, it is necessary to have two connections bring the parents of the object to the object.

The definition may be connected directly to the plural noun, or it may be connected to the singular noun. We need to pick up both the definition and the part of speech.

We will do without the logical control, and can have any number of children which share the same definition.

We search on the first connection, find the Strand definition, reach Thread and stop. We will climb any meaning tree, on the understanding higher levels encompass lower levels.

We search on the second connection, avoiding any nodes we encountered on the first search – that is, we won’t revisit  Thread, so we won’t see the other definitions.

A more complicated case, where the plural form has its own definitions, as well as picking up the definitions of the singular form. What happens now?

We find the Clothes definition. We make the other definitions persona non grata, so when we get to Threads, and then Thread, we stop searching (it is a rejected definition). This gets the definition and the POS.

A more common case:

We find Strand, which gets us to Thread, which gets us through the MEANING operator to Threads and to PluralNoun. The second search is blocked at Threads.

Verb Examples

Search finds definition at Def13, then WordRelation.

Second search finds WordVerb, is blocked at WordRelation.

Present Participle

This is a new problem. A present participle can act as a participle, it can act as an adjective (when no adjective structure is present), as a verbal noun, and as a subject participial.

The clock is running.

The rippling wheat

The rippling of the wheat.

Rippling is an activity best left to wheat.

We need to link the node to the appropriate part of speech for parsing to continue. It would be (extremely) wasteful to have all of these possibilities extant for every verb (5,000 of them), so the possibilities are meanings hanging off the PresentParticiple node – when we have convinced ourselves which one it is, we will use that. But that would need three search connections.

The alternative is that we move PresentParticiple to a meaning of PresentParticipleMeanings, and get

This doesn’t look good – all connection to the word is lost. Can’t see how to avoid three connections.

The past participle will have a similar story, where there is not an explicit adjective structure.

Why doesn’t one link suffice – there are several possible uses – participle or adjective, and the definitions apply to all forms of the verb. This is going to apply wherever there are multiple sets of meanings to be handled. Probably the worst case.