Mystery Number Five - Computational Linguistics and Talking Robots - page 114

2. the storage of content provided by recognition and inferencing in the Word
Bank (Sect. 4.2),
3. the navigation-based semantic-syntactic production in the speak mode
(Sect. 7.4),
4. the definition of such meaning relations as synonymy, antonymy, hyper-
nymy, hyponymy, meronymy, and holonymy as well as cause-effect (Sect.
4.3),
5. the design and implementation of reactor, deductor, and effector inferences
(Sect. 5.1),
6. the design and implementation of language inferences for adjusting per-
spective (Chaps. 10 and 11), and
7. the interaction between the context and language levels (Sect. 6.4).
In other words, computational linguistics can provide a talking robot with a
functionally complete cognitive framework by using placeholders to postpone
the necessary implementation of artificial recognition and action. The periph-
eral procedures are needed to supply the placeholder core values with corre-
sponding functional operations.
Without a procedural foundation of the basic core values, the artificial cogni-
tion agent will not be able to understand natural language and to act meaning-
fully. The procedures are used not only (i) to interpret and control the agent's
artificial eyes, ears, hands, legs, etc., but also (ii) as the core elements of con-
tent, and (iii) as the agent's basic language meanings.
In practice, this means that learning a new word requires the agent not only
to remember the correct surface, select the correct proplet shell, and enter the
correct (placeholder) core value, but also to acquire the core value's correct
procedural implementation. Thereby, complex core value procedures may of-
ten be acquired by observation.
Consider, for example, an artificial agent taken to the zoo where it sees for
the first time a herd of zebras. By looking at a certain zebra several times and
comparing it with the other zebras, the agent automatically derives a new type
by distilling the necessary properties within certain ranges, leaving aside the
accidental properties of the individuals. Thereby, two kinds of repetition are