Re: owl:sameAs links from OpenCyc to WordNet

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