Lexico-Syntactic Patterns

Dear Ontolex members,

I would like to contribute some ideas on lexico-syntactic patterns to the specification of the requirements and the ongoing discussion.

I have two suggestions for the specification of patterns within the ontology-lexicon interface:
1) Apply lexico-syntactic patterns to axiomatizing semi-formal definitions (maybe particularly verbs)
2) Represent/trace applied patterns (in the event of ontology evolution/matching/design)

The current ontology-lexicon model refers to syntax in form of frames to represent the syntactic behavior of lemon entries. If I am not mistaken, frames may be defined as the elements used in patterns and within the world of ontology design are referred to as design patterns. In my mind, adding lexico-syntactic patterns to the ontology-lexicon interface may help to bridge the perceived gap between ontology and lexicon/linguistics. Such patterns help to establish various semantic relations and might contribute to axiomatizing semi-formal definitions. They can facilitate the formalization of lexical knowledge and/or matching of formalized knowledge on the basis of patterns. To some extent they contain knowledge about the usage of lexical entries, which might be matched to other domains/resources. Additionally, applying and representing lexico-syntactic patterns increases the reusability of the lexicon.

Such representation of patterns might help the modeling/interpretation of mappings across both resources, as has been suggested: http://www.w3.org/community/ontolex/wiki/Specification_of_Requirements/Lexicon-Ontology-Mapping (in reference to dynamic and static verbs).

By applying lexico-syntactic patterns to the process of ontology design/evolution, we might derive ontology elements. However, the choice of pattern on the basis of natural language text and/or definitions is usually not documented in existing ontologies. The representation of lexico-syntactic patterns constituting basic ontology design/evolution motivations and decisions can facilitate not only ontology evolution but also ontology-based information extraction, question answering, ontology alignment/matching, etc. Patterns recur across genres/domains, which might render their representation in the lexicon a useful resource for ontology matching. For matching ontological concepts by means of patterns lexical information about relations is essential, which is the reason why I see the representation of lexical patterns in an environment of rich lexical information as highly beneficial. For examply, [1] shows the matching of ontology elements based on lexical properties.

One major issue might be that lexico-syntactic patterns are language specific and might not be available in all languages.

I would be very grateful for any comments or specifications to these suggestions.

Kind regards,
Dagmar Gromann

[1] Nikitina, N., Rudolph, S., Blohm, S.: Refining Ontologies by Pattern-Based Completion. In: Blomquivst, E., Sandkuhl, K., Scharffe, F., Svateck, V. (eds): Proceedings of the Workshop on Ontology Patterns (WOP 2009)


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Mag. Dagmar Gromann
Universitätsassistentin prae doc
Research Assistant

Institut für Englische Wirtschaftskommunikation
Institute for English Business Communication

WU
Wirtschaftsuniversität Wien
Vienna University of Economics and Business
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