Linking to SKOS

Dear all,

before the summer break, we discussed some problems in linking the 
ontolex model to SKOS. I would like to make an initial proposal along 
three lines:

1) SKOS says: " The class|skosxl:Label|is a special class of lexical 
entities." (see http://www.w3.org/TR/skos-reference/#xl-Label). The 
particularity is that skosxl:Labels have a only 1 restriction on 
"literalForm", i.e. there is exactly one literal form for skosxl:Labels. 
Clearly, such a restriction is compatible with our model. Nevertheless, 
we could state that "skosxl:Label" is a subClassOf ontolex:LexicalEntry. 
It conforms to the first sentence at 
http://www.w3.org/TR/skos-reference/#xl-Label and documents the fact 
that skosxl:Labels are very specific kinds of lexical entities (entries) 
that make a number of assumptions that our more general class 
"LexicalEntry" does not make. As we say that skosxl:Label is a SubClass 
we do not have any implications and there are no implications from our 
side. The implication is more on the side of the people who use both the 
SKOS and the ontolex vocabulary. But the effect is nice I think, i.e. 
all skosxl:Labels become ontolex:LexicalEntries. In practice, we could 
also write a converter from SKOS to ontolex that converts every Label 
into exactly one LexicalEntry. Not ideal, but useful to create a bridge 
between both models.

2) ontolex:LexicalConcept is defined as "the mental representation of 
the shared meaning of a collection of senses that can be exchanged in 
many contexts without substantially changing the meaning". We could 
definitely argue that ontolex:LexicalConcept is thus a subClassOf 
skos:Concept, which is "an idea or notion; a unit of thought.". I see no 
overcommitment here.

3) On skosxl:altLabel, skosxl:prefLabel and skosxl:hiddenLabel, what we 
could do is introduce an underspecified property ontolex:label

and than say that skosxl:altLabel, skosxl:prefLabel and 
skosxl:hiddenLabel are subclasses of this underspecified label class 
that we introduce.

Then we could add the following chain:

  contains^- o sense^- o form o writtenForm subPropertyOf ontolex:label

With that we would make clear that we can map our writtenForms to labels 
of some kind, but that the decision whether this is a prefLabel, 
altLabel and hiddenLabel is underspecified.

Pragmatically we could thus even write a converter form ontolex to SKOS 
that uses this underspecified property ontolex:label.

OK, all from me for now. The emails I sent are long, but I think that 
the issue warrants a deeper discussion.

Talk to all of you this afternoon at 15:00 (CEST).

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