Linking to semiotics.owl

Dear all,

  we have all agreed that we want to have links to other models, that 
these links should be formal (in the OWL sense) but that the mappings 
should not be part of the core model, but rather outsourced in a 
"linking module". The links would thus serve mainly for documentation 
purposes, but would not play a major role in the actual use of the model.

At least this is the understanding I have from the status of our discussion.

I will now make a proposal for formal linking to semiotics.owl that I 
would like to discuss and agree upon (or not).

In semiotics.owl, an "expression" is defined as: "Any information that 
either dul:expresses a Meaning or denotes a Reference". To some extent, 
this definition is quite vague and in my view we can commit totally to 
the view that a ontolex:LexicalEntry is a kind of semio:Expression".

If we look at our main path, a LexicalEntry is connected through the 
relation ontolex:denotes to an Ontology Entity. By this path, a Lexical 
Entry fullfills exactly the definition of an expression in 
semiotics.owl, so it seems justified and no over-commitment to link 
ontolex:LexicalEntry to semio:Expression through a subClassOf relation. 
We are clearly not making any unjustified commitments here.

As a corollary, it would seem natural to formally link ontolex:denotes 
to semiotics:denotes through an equivalentProperty statement (or a 
SubclassOf statement?). The consequence of linking with an 
equivalentProperty statement would be that ontolex:denotes would then 
have semiotics:Reference as range. This might seem critical in the light 
that we never wanted to fix the range of "denotes".

However, our current definition of ontolex:denotes is:

"The relation between a lexical entry and the logical predicate in an 
ontology that represents its meaning and has some denotational / 
model-theoretic semantics"

And semio:denotes is defines as follows:

"A relation between expressions and anything (including expressions).
It can be used to talk about e.g. entities denoted by proper nouns: the 
proper noun 'Leonardo da Vinci' denotes the person Leonardo da Vinci; as 
well as to talk about sets of entities that can be described by a common 
noun: the common noun 'person' denotes the collection of all persons in 
a domain of discourse. In OWL2, punning can be used to represent 
denotation of concept names with owl class extensions, e.g. 'mouse' 
denotes owl:Class:Mouse."

It seems to me that both relations semio:denotes and ontolex:denotes are 
fairly compatible, with ontolex:denotes being more specific requiring a 
"LexicalEntry" in its domain. From this perspective if makes sense to 
formally link ontolex:denotes to semio:denotes thorugh a subPropertyOf 
relation IMHO. Interestingly, our definition is even more specific. 
While semio:denotes says the range is "anything it can be used to talk 
about", we are more specific requiring the range to be "a logical 
predicate (or symbol I would say) in an ontology that represents its 
meaning and has some model-theoretic semantics".
In sum, I feel that linking to semio:denotes is absolutely warranted and 
actually no overcommitment in any way.

Now, let's consider the definition of "Reference" in semiotics.owl

A semio:Reference is "Anything that isDenotedBy an Expression, or that 
hasInterpretation some Meaning".  If we thus say indirectly that the 
range of ontolex:denotes is semio:Reference via the subProperty linking 
to semio:denotes, there is clearly no problem here as the above 
defnition is rather uncritical. I neither see any overcommitment here.

So my proposal is that in a separate linking module we add the following 
links for documentation purposes:

ontolex:denotes subPropertyOf semio:denotes
ontolex:LexicalEntry subClassOf semio:Expression

As such, it would follows that

ontolex:denotes range semio:Reference

But as I argue above this is not critical in any way and even fullfills 
our intuitions.


I will leave it here for now, we still have to discuss about a link to 
semio:Meaning and hasConceptualization, but let us first agree on the 
above and then continue.

I know we sort of agreed on this already, but Guido mentioned in his 
answer to the poll that we should have a deeper look at the links to 
make sure that we are not making any commitments that we do not want. 
Given what I said above, I do not think that we are making any 
unwarranted commitments.

I am happy to hear your point of view.

Best regards,

Philipp.




-- 

Prof. Dr. Philipp Cimiano

Phone: +49 521 106 12249
Fax: +49 521 106 12412
Mail: cimiano@cit-ec.uni-bielefeld.de

Forschungsbau Intelligente Systeme (FBIIS)
Raum 2.307
Universität Bielefeld
Inspiration 1
33619 Bielefeld