Re: owl:sameAs links from OpenCyc to WordNet

On Mon, Feb 23, 2009 at 4:03 PM, Dan Brickley <danbri@danbri.org> wrote:

> 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.


I don't think it alters your argument, Dan, but to be clear, we are linking
not just OpenCyc classes, but individuals as well to WordNet. Indeed,
http://sw.opencyc.org/2008/06/10/concept/en/India (from my original example)
denotes an individual.

But if people are assuming that WordNet synsets are not classes, then our
owl:sameAs links such as

 <http://sw.opencyc.org/2008/06/10/concept/en/Dog> owl:sameAs
<<http://sw.opencyc.org/2008/06/10/concept/en/India>
http://www.w3.org/2006/03/wn/wn20/instances/synset-dog-noun-1><http://www.w3.org/2006/03/wn/wn20/instances/synset-dog-noun-1>

may be even more problematic than the India case, since
<http://sw.opencyc.org/2008/06/10/concept/en/Dog><http://sw.opencyc.org/2008/06/10/concept/en/India>is
defined as a class, and that would imply that
< <http://sw.opencyc.org/2008/06/10/concept/en/India>
http://www.w3.org/2006/03/wn/wn20/instances/synset-dog-noun-1><http://www.w3.org/2006/03/wn/wn20/instances/synset-dog-noun-1>is
as well.

David