Re: WordNet modelling in Lemon and SKOS

Hi,

While Aldo's model is very elegant it is not possible to have lexical sense
as a subset of skos:Concept for a simple reason: the lexical sense is
defined for only a single lexeme, while the skos:Concept can be used for
multiple lexemes.

For this key reason we need to have a "lexical sense" object that is
between the lexical entry and its meaning. If you are uncomfortable with
this object then you can view it as a simple reification (although I would
contend it is a very real object). In fact this is nothing more than the
traditional lexicographic "word sense", see
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Word_sense.

I rename the "lexical sense" object of Aldo's model to "concept" or
following WordNet a "synset"

Finally, I introduce a convenience link between the lexical sense and the
ontology entity, that is simply equivalent to the property chain *synset o
conceptualizes*.

[image: Inline image 1]

Is this a model we can all agree on?

Regards,
John

PS. I made the diagram at http://draw.io/ I attach the XML version if you
wish to edit it



On Fri, Apr 19, 2013 at 4:32 AM, Armando Stellato <stellato@info.uniroma2.it
> wrote:

>  Hi Aldo,
>
> Ok, while i disagreed with John's version of the binding to semiotics
> (second row of its graphical resume), by looking at the scheme you
> provided, I totally agree with it, and I believe it is exactly matching my
> one (and in fact your one is the original lemon one, bound to the
> semiotics.owl), modulo the terminological choice of LexicalSense vs
> LexicalConcept. Ah, for "my one", pls consider the correct version  I
> provided in my email. Regarding the terminological difference, I explained
> my choice, as of:
> "The sense of a word is a LexicalConcept", so in this case I use the word
> sense only to express the relation between an expression and a meaning,
> while I "save" the word Sense to reify that same sense relation, if it is
> needed...and it is actually needed, at least internally to a resource like
> Wordnet, to represent things such as tagCount, that is the frequency of a
> word with a particular sense in SemCor. Now, I think you agree this reified
> relationship is not a Meaning (whatever we call it, LexConcept or LexSense)
> but it is just what it is, the reification of the <word,synset> pair. In
> Wordnet, the Meaning is conveyed by synsets (their words) and senses are
> mere relationships.
> Now, I swear I won't insist with the wordnettian adoption of the term
> LexicalConcept :) ( and consider that I suggested other possibilities, such
> as Meaning itself)
> though:
> 1) let me continue with it at least in this email, to the purpose of
> avoiding an overload of the term "sense"
> 2) given what I said above, pls re-consider my introduction of Sense only
> to the purpose of that reification (which may be of interest only in the
> internal description of a ling resource, and replaced by the direct
> property :sense in all ordinary cases). in this sense im interested in your
> opinion.
> 3) given the (I think) perfect match of our proposed models, I go back to
> the focus of my discussion: the original criticism was on how WordNet was
> mapped.
> For this, I would kindly ask if you could give a look at my email sent on
> 17th. Its pretty long, but you may skip some parts and go a bit over the
> section where im addressing your suggestion on this mapping. The text you
> can find is:
> "With a slight difference approach from Philipp and John, I see
> interestingly that Aldo proposed...". Again, much interested in your
> perspective here.
>
> Best,
>
> Armando
>
>  ------------------------------
> Da: Aldo Gangemi <aldo.gangemi@cnr.it>
> Inviato: ‎19/‎04/‎2013 01.14
> A: John McCrae <jmccrae@cit-ec.uni-bielefeld.de>
> Cc: Aldo Gangemi <aldo.gangemi@cnr.it>; Armando Stellato<stellato@info.uniroma2.it>;
> Philipp Cimiano <cimiano@cit-ec.uni-bielefeld.de>; public-ontolex<public-ontolex@w3.org>
> Oggetto: Re: WordNet modelling in Lemon and SKOS
>
> Hi John, I missed this when answering the other email. Just a few more
> clarifications about the schemas you provide, of course from my semiotic
> perspective. I remark that my attempts here are about a simplification of
> these matters.
>
> lemon-skos-owl diagram:
>
> from the point of view of semiotic relations, I'd rather put a mapping
> relation between a lexical sense and a skos concept, since they would both
> be (primarily) intensions, i.e. meanings. I do not understand skos:it
>
> Armando's proposal diagram:
>
> why do we need a lexical concept separated from a sense? I understand your
> point about WordNet designers' claims, but each designer of a lexical or
> linguistic resource tends to put its own philosophical view on vaguely
> defined notions like "concept", "meaning", etc. Provided that none has the
> authority to state the last word about those notions, I still think that
> basic distinctions between expressions, meaning (intension), and reference
> (extension) is something much less vague. Therefore I suggest to avoid
> resorting to "concepts": these are just another name for intensional
> entities, exactly like senses, meanings, etc.
>
> John's diagrammatic rendering of semiotics.owl:
>
> it's not quite what the model intends … it's ok to say that a lexical
> entry has a lexical sense, and that a lexical sense denotes an ontology
> entity (extensionally viewed), but the rest is not correct, because a
> lexical sense (as meaning) is not an expression, and cannot express
> meanings.
>
> Please find here attached a diagram that tries to put together those
> proposed by you, from the perspective of semiotics.owl, where the semiotic
> triangle is used as a sort of "foundational ontology" for the ontolex
> classes and relations.
>
> Aldo
>
>
>
>  On Apr 18, 2013, at 4:42:31 PM , John McCrae <
> jmccrae@cit-ec.uni-bielefeld.de> wrote:
>
>  Hi Armando, all,
>
> I will try to synthesize a few other emails into this reply.
>
> Firstly, I agree with much of what of Armando says. Although lexical
> senses may be a reification of the <Word,Synset> combo as Armando says, I
> feel this understates the importance of their role. In fact, from my
> understanding lexical senses constitute an extension of words used with a
> given meaning, by the same logic that a lexical entry (lexeme) consists of
> an extension of words used in various inflected form. By the converse it
> could be argued that the lexeme is therefore just a reification of the
> <Form,Concept> pair (in fact this approximately what a SKOS-XL label is).
> The key aspect is that is it useful in at least a significant percentage of
> language resources, in this case, the use of lexical sense as the
> annotation point for contexts (register, geographical usage), conditions
> (lexical selection restrictions) and examples (as in WordNet, see
> screenshot), make it IMHO a clearly vital part of the model.
>
> When defining *lemon, *we tried to be partly agnostic about the format of
> the ontology... we assumed it would be OWL, but didn't rule out the case of
> linking to F-Logic, FOL, etc. From this point-of-view it is not
> unreasonable  to consider linking to a SKOS concept hierarchy as an
> informal ontology.
>
> Much of the issue in this thread concerns what happens if we then want to
> link this synset/concept hierarchy to a (formal) ontology. In the following
> document they propose two options:
>
> http://www.w3.org/2006/07/SWD/SKOS/skos-and-owl/master.html
>
> They propose "overlay" and "transform" options. I suspect most members of
> this list would reject the overlay option, so looking at the transform
> option we see a model using *lemon, *OWL and SKOS (first part of attached
> image), which uses the (unfortunately) hypothetical skos:it property to
> link between the concept (synset) and the ontology entity.
>
> In a previous email today I proposed a modelling based on Aldo's
> semiotics.owl ontology (based on the understanding the lexical senses are
> expressions, synsets are meaning and ontology entities are references). As
> we can see this is structurally identical.
>
> Finally, I also looked at Armando's proposal, and it also seems very
> similar in structure. From my opinion it should be possible to move the
> domain of Armando's sense link to the Sense class* and this would leave us
> agreeing in the structure if not the names of the labels!
>
> Regards,
> John
>
> * Of course, if we take into account Philipp's proposed shortcut link (see
> http://www.w3.org/community/ontolex/wiki/Specification_of_Requirements/Lexicon-Ontology-Mapping) between
> Lexical Entries and Ontology Entites, then this link would simply be the
> shortcut.
>
>
> On Wed, Apr 17, 2013 at 9:28 PM, Armando Stellato <
> stellato@info.uniroma2.it> wrote:
>
>>  Hi again,****
>>
>> ** **
>>
>> First of all,  this is a reply to all three emails from Philipp, John and
>> Aldo (plus something more from other emails). Since the topic is the same,
>> I wrote one single reply, as there are parts of their email in common.
>> Also, a small legenda, for being shorter later in the argumentation:****
>>
>> ** **
>>
>> Ontoelement(s): those elements of an ontology which need to be referenced
>> through lexical information, that is, the objects of triples with
>> ontolex:reference as their predicate. Note here that there is some abuse of
>> notation: this “target ontology” could actually be a skos concept scheme
>> and not an owl:ontology. We do not assign any Class here, as these element
>> could be properties, individuals, classes or concepts****
>>
>> 3-entity-pattern: that LexicalEntry -> LexicalSense -> OntoElement
>> structure we (more or less) agreed on.****
>>
>> ** **
>>
>> Ah, one note…this is not only an interminably long discussion, I propose
>> a model at the end :-D****
>>
>> ** **
>>
>> I put here below names of people before any section, so that it is clear
>> who said what and whom I’m replying to:****
>>
>> ** **
>>
>> [Philipp]****
>>
>> I agree that in some sense the three-entity path seems an overkill for
>> modelling WordNet. But I think that our goal should be to design a model to
>> works for all cases and not tune the model to the particular case of
>> WordNet. So I would prefer to use the same modelling (i.e. the three-entity
>> path) across all specific resources.
>>
>> ****
>>
>> [Armando]****
>>
>> Absolutely agree on our mandate to have something homogeneous and not
>> hard-patched to some specific necessity. My proposed modelling for WordNet
>> is in fact not in the direction of sprouting exceptions from our model to
>> cover WordNet, but is actually (obviously, this is my opinion and I may be
>> wrong) a more trustworthy replication of its structure, which I think is
>> elegantly compatible with our model and even better matches it. Hence more,
>> it fosters a better integration of WordNet when used to enrich an ontology.
>> ****
>>
>> However, my perspective is not totally incompatible with some modelling
>> exigencies (see later my reply to John’s observations), and as you will
>> see, some linking can be drawn up.****
>>
>> ** **
>>
>> But, to argument better (at least, I hope), I have to take a step back
>> (and sorry, I’ll be going through things that all of you know very well,
>> but still I need to mention them for the argumentation).****
>>
>> ** **
>>
>> In WordNet we have words (terms, whatever..), and these words are bound
>> into collections called synonymy sets. To cite the most popular paper [1]
>> about WordNet, “…synonym sets (synsets) do not explain what the concepts
>> are; they merely signify that the concepts exist”. So, ok, synonym sets are
>> just “language extensional hints” to a concepts. We don’t know
>> intensionally what that concept is, but we understand there is and we know
>> linguistically how to refer to it. From a sentence in the same paper, just
>> before the aforementioned one, we read: “The synonym sets, {board, plank}
>> and {board, committee} can serve as unambiguous designators of these two
>> meanings of board”. So, meaning of boards, under an interpretative process,
>> are designated by synsets.****
>>
>> From the very first rows (the abstract) of that same publication, we
>> read: ****
>>
>> “English nouns, verbs, and adjectives are organized into synonym sets,
>> each representing one underlying lexical concept”.****
>>
>> ** **
>>
>> Ok, perfect, personally, I’ve found what I would suggest for that
>> element-in-the-middle in the 3-elements-path. It is called LexicalConcept,
>> and fits dramatically well (even terminologically) as a subclass of
>> skos:Concept. As I said many times, I personally didn’t like LexicalSense
>> as, maybe exactly biased by my knowledge of WordNet, and by a bit of common
>> sense, I would have used the word “sense”, only to represent the
>> relationship which holds between a LexicalEntry and a LexicalConcept. That
>> is to say: a LexicalEntry may have many senses, and each of them is
>> represented through a pointer – through the relation: “ontolex:sense” – to
>> a LexicalConcept, which accidentally in WordNet is a synset (not my words,
>> I’m citing their literature).****
>>
>> ** **
>>
>> Thus, recapping, in my view the thing is simple. I try to recap it as
>> Aldo did in his email, but on my modelling perspective; therefore, to me
>> the 3-entities-pattern (and gluing props) in our language would be:****
>>
>> ** **
>>
>> Class(ontolex:LexicalEntry) –prop(ontolex:sense)–>
>> Class(ontolex:LexicalConcept) –prop(ontolex:reference)–> An Ontoelement**
>> **
>>
>> ** **
>>
>> Until now, by purely graph-matching it with what has already been said,
>> it seems I just don’t like the LexicalSense name, and replaced it with
>> LexicalConcept, but there’s something different exactly when we consider a
>> case like WordNet.****
>>
>> Let’s take these two other triples:****
>>
>> ** **
>>
>> wordnet:Synset rdfs:subClassOf ontolex:LexicalConcept****
>>
>> wordnet:*syn_v_00076153* rdf:type wordnet:Synset****
>>
>> ** **
>>
>> thus, here we have just two renamings:****
>>
>> **-          **a synset instance renaming: very personally, I think the
>> synset code is the most “neutral way” of calling a synset, not biased by
>> one of the terms which are part of it, which always gave me an headache;
>> think this is the same thing Piek was referring to when talking about the
>> choice of word-sensenumber pairs as URIs for synsets in the existing RDF
>> version of WordNet****
>>
>> **-          **my LexicalConcept class instead of LexicalSense****
>>
>> but, apart from them, I took those two triples exactly as they are from
>> Aldo’s example.****
>>
>> ** **
>>
>> Now, the focus of my opposition to the original WordNet example (or
>> better, of some implications of it which I heard as confirmed in the
>> emails), is that I see this class LexicalConcept as exactly the “vague
>> lexical concept” – of which we precisely know a lexical extension – which
>> can be put in between LexicalEntries and ontoelements in the
>> 3-entities-pattern.****
>>
>> It is exactly, for instance, the bnode we put in the example in:
>> http://www.w3.org/community/ontolex/wiki/Specification_of_Requirements/Lexicon-Ontology-Mapping#Examples_using_DBpedia when
>> we write:****
>>
>> ** **
>>
>> :team a ontolex:LexicalEntry ;****
>>
>>   ontolex:canonicalForm [ontolex:writtenRep "team"@en ; ] ;****
>>
>>   ontolex:sense [ontolex:reference <http://dbpedia.org/ontology/team> ;**
>> **
>>
>> ** **
>>
>> to link the :team LexicalEntry to the dbpedia:team resource.****
>>
>> ** **
>>
>> Only…if we are using WordNet, someone has already prepared a set of these
>> LexicalConcepts (seasoned with words!) for us, gave identifiers to them (so
>> no bnodes necessary), and a general class for them, calling it Synset :-)
>> ****
>>
>> This is really the central part of what I’m saying.****
>>
>> ** **
>>
>> Thus, a very basic (but still compliant) modelling can be:****
>>
>> ** **
>>
>> wordnet:syn_n_08225481 ontolex:reference <
>> http://dbpedia.org/ontology/team> ;****
>>
>> ** **
>>
>> and we get for free all the LexicalEntries already attached to WordNet,
>> and modelled according to our vocabulary. Obviously, some other work can
>> further enrich the lexical description of a WordNet synset (which in
>> wordnet is just a set of words) thanks to our more fine grained vocabulary
>> allowing for richer characterization of Lexical Entries. Still at least
>> with one row above, we get a lot for free thanks to the mere existence of
>> WordNet.****
>>
>> ** **
>>
>> [Philipp]****
>>
>> Assuming that WordNet contains a conceptualization, each synset indeed
>> represents a skos:Concept (a unit of thought) and in that sense it seems
>> reasonable to see a Synset as a reference.****
>>
>> ** **
>>
>> [Armando]****
>>
>> Agree on the skos:Concept part, not on the rest. WordNet is a lexical
>> database. Its domain (the set of its linguistic concepts called synsets) is
>> still linguistic, and the concepts of WordNet are thus IMHO these
>> LexicalConcepts I’m advocating. If you commit somehow to WordNet, then you
>> could (you should, in my advice) commit to (and take benefits from) using
>> these synsets as the element-in-the-middle of our 3-entities-pattern.****
>>
>> I’m trying to assess WordNet in the right place of our wider
>> onto-linguistic modelling, and I see it as the linguistic part which needs
>> to be attached to the conceptual part. I wouldn’t like to see WordNet as a
>> domain (world domain) concept scheme with attached labels that can be
>> potentially mapped to our ontoelements. Obviously, the use of skos:Concept
>> may be misleading in its name (as “concept” could induce in the thought
>> that - in the onto-lex composition - it is the “onto” part), but I’m
>> stressing that this extension of skos:Concept should be our
>> ontolex:LexicalConcept, and that this ontolex:LexicalConcept itself is the
>> right cap (superclass) for wordnet:Synset when considering WordNet as a
>> specific instance of a Ontolex-modelable lexical resource. Finally, once
>> more, this implies that Synsets should sit in between LexicalEntries and
>> ontoelements in our 3-Entities-Pattern.****
>>
>> ** **
>>
>> I try now to explain the contra for the example currently in the wiki.
>> With the previous modelling, we get almost nothing back: we would have this
>> “general world ontology” called WordNet, which has its lexical entries
>> (mediated through the Sense entity), and we have two distinct universes of
>> possible actions:****
>>
>> **1)      **we could map the resources of our domain
>> ontology/conceptscheme to the synsets of WordNet, much the same way we map
>> two general domain ontologies or concept schemes.****
>>
>> **2)      **we could relate specific wordsenses, such as:
>> wordsense-vomit-verb-1, to resources in our ontology.
>>
>> ****
>>
>> But pay attention, in what I propose we could link a synset (*
>> syn_v_00076153*), through ontolex:reference, directly to ontoelements
>> and use it - coherently with our model - to have all of that synsets
>> lexicalentries bound to the intended ontoelement. In the current model
>> instead, by using WordNet senses, we should link each sense of each word to
>> the ontoelements****
>>
>> ** **
>>
>> Thus we should state:****
>>
>> wordsense-vomit-verb-1  ontolex:reference    myont:vomit****
>>
>> wordsense-cat-verb-2       ontolex:reference   myont:vomit****
>>
>> ** **
>>
>> but…is it not painful? We already had the synset as a common umbrella! Oh
>> yes, surely we could decide some entailment, for which if I link
>> (somehow..how? through skos:exactMatch?) a synset to an element of my
>> ontologies, then all of its related wordsenses (that is, the set of senses
>> for which certain words are bound to that synset) are bound to the
>> ontoelements. But how to state this entailment in the general ontolex
>> vocabulary, since Synsets are out of it? (and in fact the wiki example does
>> not hint at any general definition of wordnet:Synset under some ontolex
>> umbrella, being it only the last resource to be pointed by
>> ontolex:reference, much like an ontoelement from any other ontology).****
>>
>> ** **
>>
>> With a slight difference approach from Philipp and John, I see
>> interestingly that Aldo proposed both Synset and WordSense as subclasses of
>> ontolex:LexicalSense. This would mean that Aldo would actually allow to use
>> synsets in the middle of our 3-elements-path
>>
>> ****
>>
>>                 wordnet:WordSense rdfs:subClassOf ontolex:LexicalSense***
>> *
>>
>>                 wordnet:Synset rdfs:subClassOf ontolex:LexicalSense****
>>
>> ** **
>>
>> this seems discordant from what Philipp and John say. While I obviously
>> agree with the second axiom (it’s basically the core of what I’m saying),
>> personally I can’t see wordnet:WordSense as well as a subclass of
>> ontolex:LexicalSense, and, actually, can’t think how the two things
>> (wordnet:WordSense and wordnet:Synset), which are solidly distinct, can be
>> subclasses of the same class in any possible theory.****
>>
>> ** **
>>
>> So (if I’m correct), in the case of Philipp and John, it seems Synset is
>> left away from any convenient reuse, while in the case of Aldo, I’ve this
>> big problem with the double subclassing of both Synset and WordSense under
>> LexicalSense. You may not agree with me, but still it seems something is
>> missing.
>>
>> ****
>>
>> I was then trying to do the devil’s advocate and argument against myself:
>> “what if I want to attach a given set of words to one of my ontoelements,
>> but there is no synset in wordnet which rightly embraces it?, that is, for
>> each synset I would consider, there is a word in it that I don’t like“.
>> This could be a good point towards having word senses attached to
>> ontoelements, rather than synsets. But actually it is not, as much as
>> reducing commitment always reduces constraints and problems, but also
>> offers less solutions and opportunities. The paper [1] (and suppose much
>> more literature before that :-D ) is clear on the fact that true synonyms
>> may never exist, and the concept of synonymy is dependent on the context,
>> still the WordNet ontology (as all ontologies do) provides a discretization
>> of a world model, where the “world” is the “generic use of language”, which
>> in most of the cases will work, but may fail where this discretization is
>> not correctly representing a given shade of meaning (i.e. there is no
>> wordnet sense for a word, perfectly fitting the right concept we want to
>> express in our ontology, and thus its lexicalization).
>> But the truth is always the same in all cases of commitment: you can
>> decide to re-use what you have as much as you like, and get the benefits
>> deriving from the (shareable!) work of others up to a reasonable extent. If
>> nothing in wordnet fits a specific ontoelement of yours, then put a blank
>> node as LexicalConcept in the 3-entity-pattern, and go along in customizing
>> your specific lexical characterization, while still keeping the rest
>> (probably 99% of your ontology) happily WordNet-decorated.****
>>
>> ** **
>>
>> To recap until now, the moral behind all of that (beyond triples, names
>> etc…), is that WordNet is a linguistic resource, and by treating it as a
>> generic conceptualization, we could miss the opportunity of using it for
>> what it is.****
>>
>> ** **
>>
>> Now, a final remark, because John (and I want to assure here Piek as well
>> about his concerns :-) ) is totally right in his email, when he says: ***
>> *
>>
>> [John]****
>>
>> “Firstly, I think an important point here is that WordNet does in fact
>> have senses as a concept distinct from Synsets and Words“. ****
>>
>> ** **
>>
>> [Armando]****
>>
>> Surely this is the best argumentation on supporting the fact that these
>> senses shouldn’t go away if we want to fully support WordNet.****
>>
>> By first, something I already expressed in my previous email: it may not
>> be our priority to have all of WordNet inside OntoLex; we could cover 85%
>> of WordNet model through OntoLex, and then have some specific parts of it
>> not under the cap of our generic vocabulary (but still WordNet having its
>> own RDF modeling scheme, 100% covnering wordnet, and 85% mapped to
>> ontolex). I’m not saying we shouldn’t cover it, I just want to stress that
>> the focus in the discussions before is not on covering 100% WordNet, but on
>> how to fit it inside our model, and how to use it to enrich an ontology.
>> Given this, let’s assume that we want to cover it 100% and let’s go ahead.
>> ****
>>
>> ** **
>>
>> All of us know that, when representing a domain through a given model, we
>> may have to represent things we perceive as different, through identical
>> constructs. When we are in RDF, sometimes we have to reify relationships
>> into entities. Conversely, in relational modelling, all entities and
>> relations from an ER model become relations (e.g. then tables in a DB). So,
>> surely fact is that in the traditional WordNet index-file-based DB, there
>> is a sense index file, and that there, bindings between Synsets and Words
>> are expressed, because sometimes they need to be cited explicitly as
>> first-class citizens. ****
>>
>> Let us consider the case of lexical relations (which, namely, cover
>> relations between words). In WordNet, (since it was born merely “to be a
>> theory of the Word Meaning box”, [1, pag. 5]) there are no purely lexical
>> relations, and its lexical rels are actually stated between senses of a
>> word, that is between word-synset pairs. For instance, in common speaking,
>> we say that rise/fall are antonyms, but surely we are not addressing the US
>> expression of “autumn” as opposed to “rise”: well, WordNet accounts for
>> that, by specifying that two words are antonyms only when considering some
>> of their intended senses.****
>>
>> Another example is the tag count, again in wordnet, telling how many
>> times a specific word with a particular sense (tagged with a given synset)
>> has appeared in a corpus (e.g. SemCor). Or the sense ordering already
>> mentioned in other emails.****
>>
>> But is it anymore important than just an escamotage for adding additional
>> statistical data, put some ordering, or better qualify lex relations? I
>> think not. Synset and Words are the VIPs. Sense (in wordnet) is just the
>> reification of the <Word, Synset> combo.****
>>
>> ** **
>>
>> So, this is the notion of “sense” in WordNet: a glueing object relating a
>> Word to a Unit of Meaning (a lexical concept). The lexical concept is
>> “hinted” by the index (through the synset code) and linguistically
>> expressed by means of a Synset’s lexical extension: its words. A Word has a
>> Sense in that it points to a given Unit of Meaning.  The Sense, as such,
>> cannot have any definition, as it only reifies the link between Words and
>> UnitOfMeanings. Here I think is where the confusion has happened until now,
>> as sometimes we had this more elaborated concept of Sense as a unit of
>> meaning, while in WordNet we needed a mere reification of a relation.****
>>
>> ** **
>>
>> Thus on the one side, I would be tempted to say that “sense” is a
>> relationship, and as well, for being short, the property: ontolex:sense
>> pretty well holds it, though not for linking to a reified LexicalSense, but
>> for linking to a Unit of Meaning/LexicalConcept. On the other side, fact is
>> that we may need (see above examples) a reification of that sense
>> relationship. We have to keep the two things distinct. Here I would
>> introduce ontolex:Sense exactly as this, not as a UnitOfMeaning, but as a
>> reification of the relation between a Word and Unit of Meaning.****
>>
>> ** **
>>
>> So far so good, it seems  I could have widen the path from plain literals
>> to ontoelements instead of shortening it, but actually, if properly
>> planned, we could have very useful properties, which can be exploded into
>> reified objects if and where appropriate. And, most of all, we would keep
>> Linguistic Resources as something usable to enrich ontologies, and not as
>> further ontologies to be mapped.****
>>
>> ** **
>>
>> MODEL PROPOSAL:****
>>
>> ** **
>>
>> I would propose then the following model:****
>>
>> ** **
>>
>> NOTES: ****
>>
>> *I left out all the characterization of LexicalEntries, which is
>> obviously important, but separate from this discussion. *
>>
>> *For ease of reading, I’m using  the empty prefix instead of :ontolex
>> here.*
>>
>> ** **
>>
>> CLASSES:****
>>
>> :LexicalConcept (or Unit of Meaning, but I’ll use LexicalConcept from now
>> on)****
>>
>> :Sense****
>>
>> :LexicalEntry****
>>
>> ** **
>>
>> PROPERTIES:****
>>
>> :sense                  domain: LexicalEntry                     range:
>> LexicalConcept  (note the difference here)****
>>
>> :reference          domain: LexicalConcept               range:
>> non-specified, expect however to “land” on ontoelements.****
>>
>> ** **
>>
>> :lexEntry             range: LexicalEntry         *merely a construct
>> for the role of LexicalEntries in reifiedRelations, such as :Sense*
>>
>> :lexConcept       range: LexicalConcept   *merely a construct for the
>> role of LexicalConcepts in reifiedRelations, such as :Sense*
>>
>> ** **
>>
>> ** **
>>
>> A :Sense (capital letter) is the reification of the :sense property.
>> Being binary in involving LexicalEntries with their intended meaning
>> (LexicalConcept), ontolex:sense plays well in most of the cases, but, if we
>> need a reification, we may have the following rule:****
>>
>> ** **
>>
>> :Sense(y)                            :lexEntry
>>                 :LexicalEntry(x)****
>>
>> :Sense(y)                            :lexConcept
>> :LexicalConcept(z)****
>>
>> ------------------- --->****
>>
>> :LexicalEntry(x)                :sense
>> :LexicalConcept(z)****
>>
>> ** **
>>
>> ** **
>>
>> Now, our 3-entity-pattern is, as I said initially:****
>>
>> ** **
>>
>> Instof(ontolex:LexicalEntry) –prop(ontolex:sense)–> Instof
>> (ontolex:LexicalConcept) –prop(ontolex:reference)–> An Ontoelement****
>>
>> ** **
>>
>> Where InstOf(x) means: “an instance of x”****
>>
>> ** **
>>
>> Now, WordNet. Given that:****
>>
>> ** **
>>
>> Wordnet:Synset              rdfs:subClassOf               :LexicalConcept
>> ****
>>
>> ** **
>>
>> We may express things such as:****
>>
>> ** **
>>
>> wordnet:syn_n_08225481          ontolex:reference          <
>> http://dbpedia.org/ontology/team> ;****
>>
>> ** **
>>
>> thus bringing all of the LexicalEntries already defined in WordNet as
>> synonyms in wordnet:syn_n_08225481, as valid LexicalEntries describing
>> the ontology element dbpedia:team.****
>>
>> ** **
>>
>> By no means it holds instead that:****
>>
>> Wordnet:Sense               rdfs:subClassOf               :LexicalConcept
>> ****
>>
>> As the former includes constructs made-of elements from the latter.****
>>
>> ** **
>>
>> Ah, WordNet would have thus this reified senses, but still a direct
>> connection of the form:****
>>
>> instOf(:LexicalEntry)                      :sense
>> instOF(wordnet:Synset)****
>>
>> is possible and is hence welcome****
>>
>> ** **
>>
>> As you may see:****
>>
>> ** **
>>
>> **1)      **I preserved the possibility to reify Senses (necessary in
>> WordNet), but separated this Sense reification from the LexicalConcept (or
>> Unit of Meaning) present in the current model. ****
>>
>> **2)      **I allowed for these LexicalConcepts to be used as
>> elements-in-the-middle of our 3-entities-pattern****
>>
>> ** **
>>
>> The sense reification is very important in WordNet (as it may be in other
>> resources), to keep track of very specific things such as word ordering,
>> tag counting, or lexical relations, but while all of these have a very
>> important role in the lexical resource, they are not to the extent of a
>> ontolex binding. The :sense binary relation is more than enough in that
>> context.****
>>
>> Once more, there cannot be any further “semantic” characterization of
>> :Sense. An instance of :Sense cannot have a description, as the description
>> pertains to the LexicalConcept. :Sense, in short, is just an escamotage in
>> RDF to further characterize word-synset pairs with additional data.****
>>
>> ** **
>>
>> Really sorry for the…yes..erm… quite long email :-D****
>>
>> ** **
>>
>> Cheers,****
>>
>> ** **
>>
>> Armando****
>>
>> ** **
>>
>> P.S: As said, names might be improved (someone could insist that the
>> pointer to a WordNet synset IS de facto a reference), but I would stress
>> not to let terminology affect our modeling, and instead try later to find
>> the best way to name things if we agree on them (rem tenet…verba
>> sequentur). My only concern is that I was definitely feeling something was
>> not working with the previous modeling, and think this “structure” much
>> better renders our needs and properly exploit linguistic resources in the
>> context of enriching conceptual knowledge.****
>>
>> ** **
>>
>> [1] Introduction to WordNet: An On-line Lexical Database George A. Miller, Richard Beckwith, Christiane Fellbaum, Derek Gross, and Katherine Miller
>> http://wordnetcode.princeton.edu/5papers.pdf****
>>
>> ** **
>>
>> ** **
>>
>
> <wordnet-screenshot.png><OntoLexModels.png>
>
>
>