RE: synsem module

Hi Philipp,

 

thanks for the thorough explanation. As I said, I totally agree with you on the addition of the class (not sure though if on the core module, but..I’ve no strong opinion on that). In any case, this is again a matter of how much we want to deal with the coverage of existing and variegated lexical resources, which is at the boundary of the strict ontolex scope (though yet I find it a good occasion to do it).

 

I still don’t clearly understand the need to make it a subclass of LexicalSense. I understand that a frame more or less is bound to senses of given words, but I don’t see it as a LexicalSense itself. In some mappings, such as those to semiotics .owl, we have may have rougher containments wrt to Meaning/Expression/Reference, but the concept of LexicalSense is rather more specific than Meaning.

At most, I would see it as a subclass of LexicalConcept (though I would not vote for it either). To me a frame depicts a “situation”,and I don’t see the relation with LexicalSense.

…but it may also be very easily that I’m missing something. Maybe a coded example would help…

 

Cheers,

 

Armando

 

From: Philipp Cimiano [mailto:cimiano@cit-ec.uni-bielefeld.de] 
Sent: Friday, July 18, 2014 11:06 AM
To: Armando Stellato; 'John P. McCrae'; Armando Stellato; 'John P. McCrae'
Cc: public-ontolex@w3.org; public-ontolex@w3.org
Subject: Re: synsem module

 

John, Armando, all,

 sorry for my late reply on this issue with the "Semantic Frame". 

I still think that it is a good idea to introduce Semantic Frame as a subclass of "Lexical Sense". Let me try to argue a bit more:

1) Of course, the semantics is in the ontology, but as we all know frames are not explicit in languages such as OWL / RDF, so the "Semantic Frame" class would essentially stand proxy for a structure that can be represented in terms of ontology predicates. Imagine I have a class "GoodExchange" and a property "Lender" and a property "borrower". Then the semantic frame associated to the expression "X borrowed Y from Z" is represented by a particular set of properties in the ontology, i.e. the binary properties "lender" and "borrower". The Semantic Frame is a prox object in the lexicon that binds these properties into a unit (gestalt) that expresses the meaning of a syntactic frame such as "X borrowed Y from Z".  I agree this is in principle only syntactic sugar as this can already be represented by the current vocabulary we have. The main difference is that it makes the fact that at the ontology side we actually have a frame with arguments more explicit and clearer, particulary considering the following point 2:

2) The main reason why I am arguing to introduce the SemanticFrame class is that it is somehow non-standard to say that a Lexical Sense has semanticArguments. This will be strange for many people. It will be much clearer if we say that a SemanticFrame has semantic arguments, where the SemanticFrames simply stands proxy for a certain ontological configuration in the ontology. 

So what I am proposing is to redefine the property semArg to have SemanticFrame as domain, and making SemanticFrame a subclass of Sense. In some sense a SemanticFrame is thus a special case of a Sense that is a gestalt-like thing having semantic arguments. 

The model is increased by one class, true, that is really the only drawback I see. But it makes the model conceptually clearer and more accessible I believe. The advantage is that this extension is compatible with previous versions. If people stick to the previous modelling, the only consequence is that the LexicalSenses the have been using so far will be inferred to be SemanticFrames. This does not intefere with anyhting they have done and produces the desired inference.

Regards,

Philipp.




Am 10.07.14 11:37, schrieb Armando Stellato:

Dear all,

 

my (really poor) two cents:

 

I agree mostly with John, except that, well, yes, I wouldn’t be so close wrt introducing frames ion general. But I suspect this is again a matter of principle: either we want to *only* have a model which coherently depicts things in a given way, or we may *also* want to represent existing resources according to it. One of the things in the limbo between the two approaches has always been the representation of existing lexical resources. This is, by definition, not in the scope of OntoLex, though, in the absence of existing RDF models for lexical resources, inevitably (IMHO) it should be addressed.

 

So, to me it wouldn’t be bad to have a frame resources module, and I see a SemanticFrame in there. Again, my preference goes to have the possibility of seeing existing resources not depicted by their own ontology (e.g. FrameNet ontology), but rather seen under a larger umbrella.

However, I don’t see any kind of inclusion (in a sense or the other) with LexicalSense, and I better see it as a separate object.

 

Cheers,

 

Armando

 

 

From: johnmccrae@gmail.com <mailto:johnmccrae@gmail.com>  [mailto:johnmccrae@gmail.com] On Behalf Of John P. McCrae
Sent: Thursday, July 10, 2014 11:12 AM
To: Philipp Cimiano; Philipp Cimiano
Cc: public-ontolex@w3.org <mailto:public-ontolex@w3.org> ; public-ontolex@w3.org <mailto:public-ontolex@w3.org> 
Subject: Re: synsem module

 

Hi,

 

On Wed, Jul 9, 2014 at 12:32 PM, Philipp Cimiano <cimiano@cit-ec.uni-bielefeld.de <mailto:cimiano@cit-ec.uni-bielefeld.de> > wrote:

Dear all,

 I am working through the synsem module, see my updates on the GIT repository.

I do not have major changes of this module other than the following two:

1) I have changed a number of definitions to make them clearer, please check and let me know if the definitions are fine.

2) For the sake of symmetry, I propose to add a class "SemanticFrame" as a counterpart to Frame, which represents a syntactic frame, essentially capturing the valence or subcat behaviour of a given lexical entry. This SemanticFrame would essentially be a subclass of LexicalSense, and would leave the other parts of the model essentially untouched. I feel that having this symmetry (syntactic and semantic side) makes the model more elegant and clearer. Some people will be looking for something like this. Essentially, a SemanticFrame would represent a gestalt-like conceptual construction that represents the meaning of a lexical entry.

I have chosen the following definition for the "SemanticFrame" class: A Semantic Frame is a coherent structure of related concepts that are related such that without knowledge of all of them, one does not have complete knowledge of any one; they are in that sense types of gestalt. The coherent structure is represented by one or more predicates from a given ontology.

I'm not sure what this brings us, it adds an extra class (which inevitably increases complexity and confusion) for no technical advantage. That is do we really have a concrete example where it would be good to use a SemanticFrame instead of a LexicalSense?

 

Also, I am not sure that the axiomatization of SemanticFrame as a subclass of LexicalSense makes sense... in particular is it not the case that every LexicalSense is a SemanticFrame as it refers to a concept in the ontology and is thus simply mapped to the argument structure of the ontological predicate, thus every lexical sense necessarily is associated with a semantic frame. If we agree that SemanticFrame ⊒ LexicalSense, we should then ask is there is a semantic frame that is not a lexical sense? Firstly, from the point of view of OntoLex all semantic is in the ontology, therefore a semantic frame must also refer to the ontology, thus we need only ask if there is such a thing as a non-lexicalized semantic frame? The conclusion that was reached in Monnet was that there was no such thing, or at least such a thing is not relevant is not to OntoLex (as we only wish to describe how ontologies are lexicalized), thus we could say that LexicalSense ≡ SemanticFrame and eliminate the unnecessary synonym from the model. 

 

>From a strategic standpoint, I think that we should avoid adding the semantic frame in because "people will be looking for something like this". The fact that people will look for this means that if they find something with a name like this that doesn't actually work like they expect then they are guaranteed to misuse it! Instead, if they find a clear documentation of why such an object does not exist (i.e, "semantics is in the ontology") then that will help them far more than introducing a confusing subclass. 

 

The definition as it stands currently is also weak for similar reasons... if a semantic frame is a "structure represented by one or more predicates from an ontology", why is it in the lexicon not entirely in the ontology??

 

Regards,

John

 


Please check the ontology, the examples etc. and help me to debug the ontology, description and examples.

Best regards,

Philipp.





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Prof. Dr. Philipp Cimiano
AG Semantic Computing
Exzellenzcluster für Cognitive Interaction Technology (CITEC)
Universität Bielefeld
 
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