- From: Uschold, Michael F <michael.f.uschold@Boeing.com>
- Date: Mon, 5 Apr 2004 12:52:19 -0700
- To: "Aldo Gangemi" <a.gangemi@istc.cnr.it>, "Jeremy Carroll" <jjc@hplb.hpl.hp.com>
- Cc: <public-swbp-wg@w3.org>
Reminder: please use the [<acronym>] notation for subject headers so we can easily spot those of interest to us. Mike -----Original Message----- From: public-swbp-wg-request@w3.org [mailto:public-swbp-wg-request@w3.org] On Behalf Of Aldo Gangemi Sent: Wednesday, March 31, 2004 12:56 AM To: Jeremy Carroll Cc: public-swbp-wg@w3.org Subject: Re: WordNet Task Force - work outline >At 16:35 +0100 30-03-2004, Jeremy Carroll wrote: >I still owe an example of a simple use of WordNet ... >this wasn't quite the one I had in mind, but has the advantage of being more >real: >http://norman.walsh.name/knows/where#dk-copenhagen >is described as having RDF type >http://xmlns.com/wordnet/1.6/City >clicking on the above URL gives an RDF/XML download .... >and uses words from WordNet as RDF classes ... >I think what Norm is trying to do is simply say that his copenhagen URI is a >resource which belongs to a class with some (strong) relationship to the >english word city in wordnet 1.6 sense 1 with description 'a large and densely >populated urban area; may include several independent administrative >districts; "Ancient Troy was a great city"' >This use of WordNet is fairly naive (in the sense that non-experts can do it) >and does not depend on any of the relationships between words. >Jeremy I agree, indeed this is what I expect from Wordnet on the Semantic Web: the Copenhagen Norm is talking about is an instance of http://xmlns.com/wordnet/1.6/City. All right. But also look at the file at http://xmlns.com/wordnet/1.6/City: City is a class introduced with all its taxonomic branch (poor practice: if each class is introduced with all its superclasses, the ontology results unnecessary long), then all hyponyms of "City" are introduced, for instance: <Class rdf:about="http://xmlns.com/wordnet/1.6/Dunkerque"> <subClassOf rdf:resource="http://xmlns.com/wordnet/1.6/City"/> <label>Dunkerque</label> <comment>a city in northern France on the North Sea where in World War II (1940) 330,000 Allied troops had to be evacuated from the beaches at Dunkirk in a desperate retreat under enemy fire</comment> </Class> But Dunkerque can be hardly a class, except in some peculiar ontologies that take 4D and set-theoretically extensional classes (Dunkerque as the temporal worm equivalent to the set of all the states in the area named Dunkerque!). In fact, the hyperonym relation in WordNet *generally* means subClassOf, but words and terms often name individuals, and many individuals are so important to be put in a dictionary as Wordnet. Cities are a case. Then, when reengineering WordNet for the SW, WN data types should be remapped to OWL (or RDF) data types in a consistent way, and I think our job is to explain as much as possible how to obtain that consistency. Another curious thing: I supposed Copenhagen being there, but it is not. I checked WordNet, and the reason is that Copenhagen is a hyponym of "Capital City", which is a hyponym of "City", then it is not included in the resource. Moreover, putting both "Capital City" and "Dunkerque" as hyponyms of "City" is patently a poor practice of ontological modelling (but not necessarily for a dictionary such as WN). Thanks for pointing at that spontaneous example. The use of Norm is not naïve, it is precise. What is too simplistic is the type mapping encoded in the RDFS file. Cheers Aldo -- Aldo Gangemi Research Scientist Laboratory for Applied Ontology ISTC-CNR Via Nomentana 56, Rome, Italy +39.06.86090249 ------------------------------------------------- This mail sent through IMP: http://horde.org/imp/
Received on Monday, 5 April 2004 16:17:47 UTC