- From: Dan Brickley <danbri@danbri.org>
- Date: Mon, 23 Feb 2009 23:03:31 +0100
- To: Mike Bergman <mike@mkbergman.com>
- CC: David Baxter <retxabd@gmail.com>, "public-lod@w3.org" <public-lod@w3.org>
On 23/2/09 22:24, Mike Bergman wrote: > David Baxter wrote: >> We at Cycorp have been publishing owl:sameAs links from our OpenCyc >> concepts to WordNet synsets, e.g. >> >> <http://sw.opencyc.org/2008/06/10/concept/en/India> owl:sameAs >> <http://www.w3.org/2006/03/wn/wn20/instances/synset-India-noun-1> >> >> We've done so with the idea that the WordNet synset represents the >> same concept as the OpenCyc term (i.e. the South Asian country in this >> case), and contains further relevant information that complements what >> is available in OpenCyc, e.g. >> >> "is a member of OPEC" (OK, this one's of dubious value, but it might >> be useful if it were true) >> "is a member of the British Commonwealth" >> "is a part of Asia" >> >> However, WordNet also contains assertions about the "India" synset >> that seem strange to assert about the country, e.g. >> >> "is an instance of NounSynset" >> "contains WordSense 'Republic of India 1'" >> >> We'd like to know what the general feeling in the LOD community is >> about these links. Is there any precedent or consensus about the best >> way to link from ontologies such as OpenCyc's to WordNet? Is anyone >> finding these links useful and/or harmful? >> >> Thanks for any input. > > I've rolled back to your starting message since intervening comments > have unfortunately snipped out the essence of your question about > owl:sameAs. Maybe we lack agreement on what the essence was! Let me also again add this link from over the weekend that I > think is also germane: > > http://i9606.blogspot.com/2009/02/semantic-dissonance-in-uniprot.html > > As I understand the current OWL, "an owl:sameAs statement indicates that > two URI references actually refer to the same thing: the individuals > have the same 'identity.'" [1]. In logical terms, I understand this to > represent complete and total identity, equivalent to the '=' > relationship, or something pretty doggone close to it. I also understand > this property to perhaps have the strongest entailment of any OWL property. Yup, owl:sameAs is for when there's only one thing, not two similar or related things. > The inference from your use case and the similar issue with Ben's > uniprot example are all too typical of sameAs problems once disparate > datasets actually get pulled together. > > I appreciate the rdf:seeAlso suggestion; it is the most common fallback. > But the issue with that one, which is why you went to sameAs in the > first place, is that seeAlso is way too weak to convey the nature of the > relationship. Sure, we could do a subPropertyOf but we could at best > capture only the very weak semantics that seeAlso presently provides; we > could not strengthen it. > > I think the real issue is that we don't have a readily available (or at > least accepted) predicate. I would suggest, though, that the issue at > hand is very much captured by the concept of "relative identity": > > http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/identity-relative/ > > esp. Section 3 (though there are some wonderful paradoxes throughout). > > What I like about 'relative identity' is that we can still infer and > reason over the relationship (but *how* and weak or strong still is up > for grabs). > > I think the considerable experience of Cycorp in such matters could be > invaluable in severing this Gordian knot. Care to stroll deeper into the > den? > > A hasRelativeIdentity B ?? Interesting, but I think in this case we're talking about modeling some lightweight linguistics data, and linking it to the classes the natural language words are words for. Talk of identity is a bit of a distraction here. This is due to the modeling style chosen for the W3C Wordnet RDF representation, nothing more. If it were a class-centric projection of Wordnet into RDF, we'd be having quite a different discussion. cheers, Dan > Thanks, Mike > > [1] http://www.w3.org/TR/owl-ref/ > >
Received on Monday, 23 February 2009 22:04:13 UTC