Re: input document for discussion on Friday

Guido, all,

  I appreciate your comments. Before continuing to discuss the 
ontological status of a sense, let me provide some working definitions 
for "Sense" and "representedBy".

Sense: meaning of a word w when intrepreted as referring to ontological 
concept c.

And yes, we represent the connection between w and c through sense as a 
reification.

representedBy:  this captures the relation between a sense s and some 
symbol c (constant). The semantics of "representedBy" is something 
like:  s is representedBy c <-> the axiomatization in c captures the 
ontological commitment of s

This means that we assume that there is some ontological commitment in 
words and that this ontological commitment can be axiomatized (or not) 
in some ontology.

This still allows to be less or more vague. If we do not add any axioms 
constraining the interpretation of a symbol, then we are maximally vague.

So, if we take the word "bald", there is sure some ontological 
commitment in this word. For instance, Bruce Willis (see attached 
picture) is clearly bald, while Slash (the guitarist of Guns N' Roses) 
is not (see picture). So there is some clear ontological committment of 
the word "bald", though in other cases it might not be that clear-cut.

Hope this makes sense and helps to clarify the notions.

Regards,

Philipp.




Am 01.11.12 11:43, schrieb Guido Vetere:
>
> Am 31.10.12 13:35, schrieb Guido Vetere:
>
> > the model of Sense as (sub)classes that I've recommended (as is
> > implemented in Senso Comune) would look like the following:
> >
> > ex:lemon rdf:type ontolex:Lex.
> >
> > ex:lemon ontolex:hasSense lemon_1.
> >
> > ex:lemon_1 rdf:type (ontolex:Sense AND ontolex:denotes ONLY <http://
> > dbpedia.org/page/Lemon>).
> >
> > Of course, if you want you can introduce a named class, like
> >
> > mylex:Lemon_as_fruit owl:equivalentClass (ontolex:Sense AND
> > ontolex:denotes ONLY <http://dbpedia.org/page/Lemon>)
> >
> > to have:
> >
> > ex:lemon_1 rdf:type mylex:Lemon_as_fruit
> >
> > Can we consider this as another option?
> >
>
> Philipp Cimiano <cimiano@cit-ec.uni-bielefeld.de> wrote on 31/10/2012 
> 17:24:05:
>
> > Guido,
> >
> >  yes, of course, this is an option. But where do you see the
> > advantage compared to directly saying that the sense is a subclass
> > of the class in question?
> >
>
> Philipp,
>
> I think it depends on what ontology concepts and sense, respectively, 
> represent in your system. If they are both representations of the same 
> kind of things, then maybe there's not a clear advantage in the model 
> I suggest. Actually, in many IT artifacts called 'ontology', concepts 
> are indistinguishable from linguistic senses, so I understand where 
> the question comes from.
>
> On the other hand, if the ontology that you want to map with your 
> lexicon is intended to be a 'theory of the reality' independent from 
> any language, then you wouldn't say, for example, that the sense 'cat' 
> in English is an instance of the concept 'cat' (or a subclass) and 
> therefore is expected to have four legs and a tail. In other words, if 
> you want 'Sense' to stand for a specific kind of things, then you need 
> to be 'multiplicative', i.e. introduce an entity 'Sense' besides the 
> entity you want it to refer to, in order to keep predication on 
> linguistic facts in a distinguished place. Once again, if you are 
> happy with saying that cats don't have four legs, but they are just 
> said to have four legs (in this view, mereology is just another name 
> of meronimy) then the distinction between senses and other classes may 
> appear to you as a useless sophistry (if not a dangerous dogmatism).
>
> I can provide several arguments in favour of a multiplicative 
> approach. One of them, as discussed some time ago, has to do with 
> vagueness. But I think that we should be liberal with respect to 
> different views of what senses are from an ontological standpoint. If 
> I understand the discussion we have been doing so far correctly, we 
> agreed to reify senses, which means, at least, having them as 
> mediating elements in data structures that bring words and concepts 
> together. Let's give a shape to this structure and allow different 
> formal ontological interpretations for it. Then we may discuss pros 
> and cons of each of them.
>
> Kind regards,
>
> Guido Vetere
> Manager, Center for Advanced Studies IBM Italia
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-- 
Prof. Dr. Philipp Cimiano
Semantic Computing Group
Excellence Cluster - Cognitive Interaction Technology (CITEC)
University of Bielefeld

Phone: +49 521 106 12249
Fax: +49 521 106 12412
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