RE: synsem module

I would like to better understand if we are talking here of (kind of) 
'Fillmore frames' (i.e., roughly, typical situations) or we are focussing 
on something like subcategorization frames, e.g. the argument strucure of 
verbal predicates, à la VerbNet.

In either case, I wouldn't introduce a new class as a subclass of 
LexicalSense. If we want to capture 'situational' frames, then I think 
that this would require much more modeling, to be kept in a separate 
module; if we want to be able to specify the typical argumental structure 
of lexical predicates, then every LexicalSense may have one or more of 
these structures, so there's no need of introducing a new class, until we 
don't want to model 'predicative lexical senses' as distinguished from 
lexical senses in general, which should be carefully discussed however.

Regards,

Guido Vetere
Manager, Center for Advanced Studies IBM Italia
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From:   Armando Stellato <stellato@info.uniroma2.it>
To:     "'Philipp Cimiano'" <cimiano@cit-ec.uni-bielefeld.de>, "'John P. 
McCrae'" <jmccrae@cit-ec.uni-bielefeld.de>, "'John P. McCrae'" 
<jmccrae@cit-ec.uni-bielefeld.de>, 
Cc:     <public-ontolex@w3.org>, <public-ontolex@w3.org>
Date:   18/07/2014 12:56
Subject:        RE: synsem module
Sent by:        <outlook_286613bd75acae8a@outlook.com>



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] On Behalf Of John 
P. McCrae
Sent: Thursday, July 10, 2014 11:12 AM
To: Philipp Cimiano; Philipp Cimiano
Cc: public-ontolex@w3.org; 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> 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.



-- 
 
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
 


-- 
--
Prof. Dr. Philipp Cimiano
AG Semantic Computing
Exzellenzcluster für Cognitive Interaction Technology (CITEC)
Universität Bielefeld
 
Tel: +49 521 106 12249
Fax: +49 521 106 6560
Mail: cimiano@cit-ec.uni-bielefeld.de
 
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