Re: WordNet modelling in Lemon and SKOS

Hi all,

I am glad we are close to an understanding :)

I agree that WordNet's synset could be a subclass of a Lexical Concept
class, however might it not make more sense (especially with respect to
dissemination) to just call it Synset?

Note: LexicalSense cannot be a subclass of semio:Meaning, it should be a
subtype of the tuple (semio:Expression,semio:Meaning)

I would however be strongly in favour of having the following path still in
the model:

LexicalEntry --sense--> LexicalSense --reference--> (OntologyEntity)*

The primary reason for this is simply to allow for backwards compatibility
with the current lemon model.

Furthermore, I think that the distinction Aldo makes between type A and
type B modelling requirements is valid and important. In particular, it
seems that type A modelling will involve not using an ontology entity
(using a three-element path like below) and type B modelling will not use
LexicalConcept (using a path as above).

LexicalEntry --sense--> LexicalSense --lexConcept--> LexicalConcept

There is another option as well a type AB modelling where there is both
intensional and extensional modelling, or more commonly someone wishes to
link a type A resource to a type B resource. So we need a link between the
Lexical Concept and the Ontology Entity (as exists in all proposals).

LexicalConcept --conceptualizes--> (OntologyEntity)

However, this has a drawback, in that it allows equivalent paths in the
model namely sense/reference and sense/lexConcept/conceptualizes. This
makes the model harder to apply and brings back the discussion of Philipp's
shortcut property between LexicalEntries and OntologyEntity. Therefore
there are two options

   1. Fix the model as a four element path
   (sense/lexConcept/conceptualizes) and drop other properties (e.g.,
   reference)
   2. Allow for ambiguity in the expression of the ontology-lexicon
   connection (in fact Philipp's shortcut would now be 'denotes' in my
   proposal)

While I don't like either option I would have to admit that 2 is probably
better

The second clear issue that comes from this modelling is to do with the
levels of annotation/linking. By which I mean that we need to be clear in
the model which annotations & relationships belong should be part of the
LexicalSense vs. LexicalConcept vs. OntologyEntity

My guess is the following holds:

LexicalSense
------------

* Register
* Translation
* Sense examples
* (Some) selection restrictions (e.g., 'gehen'/'fahren'@de...
'ageru'/'kureru'/'kudasaru'@ja-Latn)

LexicalConcept
--------------

* Anotnymy
* Hypernymy/Hyponymy (?)
* Quality models (e.g., 'big' vs 'huge')
* Gloss/Definition (?)

OntologyEntity
--------------

* Formal super/subclassing
* Domain/Range restrictions
* Axioms
* Gloss/Definition (?)

Regards,
John

PS.
* The naming of the OntologyEntity class is technically irrelevant as it
cannot be an owl:Class as object properties, data properties and
individuals (as well as datatypes and sets) are valid so it is best that
formally it's name is simply omitted.


On Wed, Apr 24, 2013 at 3:38 AM, Armando Stellato <stellato@info.uniroma2.it
> wrote:

>  Hi Aldo,
>
> Fine. Actually since the naming of concepts was still to be assessed, and
> since in some cases we could have been reusing specific classes from
> existing vocabularies, I used that informal labeling in the upper part of
> the boxes for clarifying their role, and an explicit reference to the
> proposed class in the lower one.
> Thus "target conceptual model" was intended to capture actually elements
> of possibly different models (and in fact the least subsuming class is
> owl:Thing) so I confirm your hypothesis.
> I must admit I only grasp partially the reason for which we should
> consider differently type-A and type-B models. My perspective, wrt, for
> instance, the triangle of Meaning, is that in-any-case what we formally
> write are still symbols (progressively richer in their description  ),
> which are then translated into references in our mind which refer to
> referents in the world.
> And in this sense a synset, for instance, is still a symbol which, thanks
> to the set of synonyns in it, and the gloss etc.. better drives the access
> to a reference in our minds than a single word. In terms of Sinn and
> Bedeutung, an owl:Class has intensional properties as much as a
> skos:Concept has, plus it may restrict (through a set of formal
> constraints) its extension, the interpretations of which, however, are
> still infinite. In this sense, Words, skos:Concepts, owl:Classes are all
> "expressions", and referents are totally out of our representation game.
> Thus, any meaning/reference distinction is not really clear to me. Much the
> same way, how would u consider an owl:Individual wrt a skos:Concept (well
> actually a concept is an individual in owl terms..) Are not them both
> purely intensional objects?
> However, I may be easily wrong in that, and will not delve further in the
> discussion, so one practical question:
> Suppose I've a domain concept scheme (e.g. Agrovoc) and a "conceptualized"
> lexical resources such as WordNet. Beyond any possible linking to
> meaning/reference etc.. would you see it as possible to have some form of
> "tagging" of the domain concept scheme with wordnet's synsets, where it is
> clear (in ontolex) that the synsets are not (only) mere skos:Concepts (thus
> to be mapped through ordinary mapping relation, eg from skos) and are
> instead lexical objects (instances of LexicalConcept in particular) which
> can be used to enrich the domain concepts?
>
> Cheers,
> Armando
>
>  ------------------------------
> Da: Aldo Gangemi <aldo.gangemi@cnr.it>
> Inviato: ‎24/‎04/‎2013 00.28
> A: Armando Stellato <stellato@info.uniroma2.it>
> Cc: Aldo Gangemi <aldo.gangemi@cnr.it>; 'John McCrae'<jmccrae@cit-ec.uni-bielefeld.de>;
> 'Philipp Cimiano' <cimiano@cit-ec.uni-bielefeld.de>; 'public-ontolex'<public-ontolex@w3.org>
>
> Oggetto: Re: WordNet modelling in Lemon and SKOS
>
> Hi Armando, John, all,
>
>  On Apr 23, 2013, at 11:19:48 PM , "Armando Stellato" <
> stellato@info.uniroma2.it> wrote:
>
>   Dear John,****
>
> After seeing your updated scheme, I think we are almost there. I had a
> short call with Aldo for checking the only one thing I was a bit uncertain
> of in his email (the double subclassing he proposed for WordNet’s
> WordSense/Synset under the ontolex:LexicalSense umbrella).****
> I’m resuming a few points here, and I ask Aldo to confirm if I’m properly
> reporting what we discussed (obviously I’m cutting most of the conversation
> and report only the main questions and where we ended up).
>
>
> thanks for the summary :)
>
>   ****
>
> Armando: Why both wn:WordSense and wn:Synset subclasses of LexicalSense?**
> **
> Aldo: they are both a form of Meaning. These can be totally disjoint
> classes as u said in your email, still being under the same superclass.***
> *
> Armando: Ok, let’s go back to the linking to semiotics.owl… ok for both
> wn:WordSense and wn:Synset under semio:Meaning…they are both a form of
> meaning (thus both rdfs:subClassOf semio:Meaning) and I agree… but then,
> the engineer in me tells: <ok, this is a proper “tagging”, but how can
> these be used operatively?> I mean, ok for the general Meaning class in
> semiotics.owl, but LexicalSense cannot be an Umbrella for both too…our
> ontolex model should be general enough to cover different resources, and
> specific enough to cover in detail the most important aspects of them. To
> me, I would like WordNet to be opaquely handled by agents as an instance of
> a Lexical Resouce modeled in OntoLex. I’m thinking about some of the use
> cases, where smart agents covering given tasks (such as Ontology Mapping)
> may benefit of the implicit perspective on WordNet given through OntoLex
> glasses (a monolingual resource, with a conceptual structure etc…), and can
> adapt this sort of “ontolex fingerprint” of the resource into their general
> mapping strategies (this is also where the metadata part of the language
> will come into play). “Plugging” another resource should work as well, as
> much as its content can be seen through a proper mapping inside the OntoLex
> vocabulary.
> So I suggest to make explicit in our model the existence of “Senses of
> LexicalEntries”, let’s call them LexicalSense or just Sense (e.g.
> specifically, a superclass of WordSenses in wordnet) and LexicalConcepts
> (specifically, a superclass of synsets in WordNet). Then I agreed that both
> Sense and LexicalConcept are tagged (subClassOf) as (different types of)
> Meanings, for the purpose of properly representing them under the Triad in
> semiotics.owl****
> Aldo agrees on having these two distinct elements in OntoLex too, and
> bound them under the common umbrella of semio:Meaning.
>
>
> Confirmed. I have no issue about creating intermediate classes whatsoever,
> provided we all agree on the intuition about expressions, (intensional)
> meanings, and (extensional) references.
>
> Concerning the diagram, I'm ok with links and names.
>
> My only observation is about "TargetConceptualModel" (not really discussed
> with Armando): if that is a class of conceptual models (as the name
> suggests), why should it be a subclass of Reference. I'd call it better
> OntologyEntity (as Lemon does, as well as LRI, the multilingual ontolex
> model made in NeOn project in 2008), and put a link between OntologyEntity
> and the ontology that defines it.
> However, maybe you want to talk about arbitrary conceptual models and
> their elements. For this I think we need some more clarification, because
> there are two types of conceptual models:
>
> A) purely intensional conceptual models, like SKOS models, classification
> schems, thesauri, synsets, lexical frames, etc.
> B) formally interpreted conceptual models, like ontologies, ER schemas,
> UML class diagrams (under ER-like semantics), etc.
>
> For type-A conceptual models, I am still recalcitrant to accept their
> elements as references, since no clear extensional intuition is granted,
> except under a sort of "stipulation" by which I accept the risks of
> interpreting them extensionally (old SKOS did that by having skos:Concept
> as both rdfs:subClassOf owl:Thing and of rdfs:Class). I think no default
> extensional choice like that should be made.
>
> For type-B conceptual models, we can safely adopt the extensional
> interpretation.
>
> Now, since this community group works under the semantic web and linked
> data umbrella, I do not see the necessity of forcing our model to deal with
> debatable choices wrt type-A conceptual models, which can be instead
> interpreted in the context of the Meaning class (that's because I put
> skos:Concept as a subclass of semio:Meaning).
>
> I won't be able (last time hopely) to attend Friday's telco, but will be
> active in the email discussion.
> Ciao
> Aldo
>
>   ****
>
> I’m attaching (and reporting here below) an updated version of the model I
> sent in my last email, with the mapping to Semiotics.owl which followed the
> discussion with Aldo. As you may see, it is pretty similar to the last one
> you sent (modulo naming choices and the double linking to semio:Meaning).*
> ***
> Regarding chosen names, just a couple of comments:****
>
> 1)      I suggested, as a OntoLex superclass for Synset, the name Lexical
> Concept (ref. Miller’s paper, where he defines synsets as a form of
> “Lexical Concepts”). This captures the idea of a given set of
> LexicalEntries hinting at a (non explicit nor formally defined) concept.
> Note (not in the figure) that this LexicalConcept may be a subclass of
> skos:Concept. An alternative could be “LexicalizedConcept”, though the
> former one surely sounds better :-)****
> 2)      Conversely, for the other class reifying the sense relationship,
> I’m not sure about the appropriateness of the name LexicalSense, as in this
> name “Lexical” seems an adjective of “Sense”. But, IMHO, it is not.
> LexicalSense is more specifically the sense of a given Lexical Entry. Thus
> the proper name should be LexicalEntrySense (in fact, in WordNet - limiting
> lexical entries to be words - we have the class WordSense). However
> LexicalEntrySense is rather long and ambiguous to be parsed. Other choice
> could be SenseOfLexicalEntry (rather ugly), or simply (my preference),
> Sense. Btw, just my small note on that and absolutely can be left as is…but
> I really cannot grasp the meaning of such an expression.  Simply, the step
> from the expression “LexicalSense” to its intended meaning of “Sense of a
> Lexical Entry” to me is not intuitive.****
> 3)      I chose the ontolex:sense property to go from LexicalEntry to
> LexicalConcept. To me it is intuitive, as (grounding to WordNet, for
> instance), the sense of a Word lies in its linking to a Synset (or in
> general, to a unit of meaning). And then we can reify this relation into a
> Sense class as there can be many important things to say about it. However,
> I understand that following ontology modelling conventions, one could
> expect the ontolex:sense property to link to instances of a Sense class… so
> open to opinions (and proposals) for this property renaming. Even those
> from John’s last model could be reasonable.****
> Cheers,****
> Armando****
>
> <image005.png>****
>
>
>
> *From:* johnmccrae@gmail.com [mailto:johnmccrae@gmail.com] *On Behalf Of *John
> McCrae
> *Sent:* venerdì 19 aprile 2013 10.44
> *To:* Armando Stellato
> *Cc:* Aldo Gangemi; Philipp Cimiano; public-ontolex
> *Subject:* Re: WordNet modelling in Lemon and SKOS****
> ** **
>  Hi,****
>  ** **
>  While Aldo's model is very elegant it is not possible to have lexical
> sense as a subset of skos:Concept for a simple reason: the lexical sense is
> defined for only a single lexeme, while the skos:Concept can be used for
> multiple lexemes.****
>  ** **
>  For this key reason we need to have a "lexical sense" object that is
> between the lexical entry and its meaning. If you are uncomfortable with
> this object then you can view it as a simple reification (although I would
> contend it is a very real object). In fact this is nothing more than the
> traditional lexicographic "word sense", see
> http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Word_sense.****
>  ** **
>  I rename the "lexical sense" object of Aldo's model to "concept" or
> following WordNet a "synset"****
>  ** **
>
>
> [il messaggio originale non è incluso]
>