Re: Meaning and Semiotics - Issues for Modelling

John,

We do need senses, since lexical units (lexemes) may have different 
meanings (polysemy). Whether to call them 'sense', 'acceptation', 
'sememe', 'meaning', etc, depends (in my opinion) on how we want to 
qualify these objects with respect to a comprehensive model (theory). 

In Senso Comune, for instance, we called them 'acceptation' (but we are 
currently looking for a more comfortable word) because we started from 
representing lexicographical notions, i.e. (ontologically) Information 
Objects which are constitutive of a special kind of books, namely 
Dictionaries. Moreover, our senses (acceptations) are not directly mapped 
to classes representing 'real things', but with (sub)classes of a 
Non-Physical Entity called Meaning. Possibly, these classes are defined by 
specifying the kind of real thing they characterize, which is, ultimately, 
the 'ontological commitment' behind the word (à la Quine).

To give an example, the adjective 'bald' in the sense of 'lacking hairs') 
may look like this:

Lexical Entry: bald (adjective)                 Meaning          Thing 
|__ part -> Sense 1:  Definition "having a scalp wholly or partly lacking 
hair"     ------ maps to --->  |__ isa -> Meaning_of_bald_1   ---- 
characterizes-only ---->   |__ isa -> Human

Note that, this way, we can account for linguistic vagueness, since we 
don't commit ourselves to say that, in the World, there are 'bald things' 
- even though, if you look at me or Aldo, you wouldn't have doubts about 
that :-)

Regards,

Guido Vetere
Manager, Center for Advanced Studies IBM Italia
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John McCrae <jmccrae@cit-ec.uni-bielefeld.de> 
Sent by: johnmccrae@gmail.com
06/08/2012 14.54

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public-ontolex <public-ontolex@w3.org>
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Subject
Meaning and Semiotics - Issues for Modelling






Hi all,

I thought I would get the ball rolling on the requirements "Express 
Meaning with respect to ontology". I fleshed out two of the key issues for 
modelling the lexicon-ontology interface here

http://www.w3.org/community/ontolex/wiki/Specification_of_Requirements/Lexicon-Ontology-Mapping

They are

Do we need a lexical sense/acceptation object between the lexical entry 
and the ontology entity?
How do we interpret different lexical classes relative to an ontology
Does anyone have comments?

Regards,
John


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