[WNET] OntoClean and analysis

I just read the paper [1] by Aldo et al about the application of the 
OntoClean methodology to WordNet's top level. Interesting stuff.

The paper describes research in progress - I'd be very grateful to hear 
the current status. I also think it highlights a potential difficulty 
that is likely to be encountered by other groups wishing to express 
other wordnets in RDF/OWL.

The WordNet vocabulary is derived from the scruffy world of human 
language, and the description of the relationships between the terms 
presupposes that there are systems to be found in the data. The first 
pass at going meta (WordNet) yields something that was still fairly 
random when viewed from above (the meta-properties of OntoClean). The 
amount of heterogeneity (big variations in granularity, uncomfortable 
mixes of types) in the pre-OntoClean top level, and the amount of 
'cleaning' that was needed might suggest that the DL style of modelling 
might not in fact be such a good fit. Is it safe to assume the 
heterogeneity was simply the result of human imperfection at classifying 
terms? Might that be helped by provision of a framework extending up to 
OntoClean's level earlier in the process?

Probably stretching the point, I read somewhere recently how the 
categorisation used by Roget in his thesaurus said a lot about his own 
world view (some religious connection?). Might there not be a danger of 
WN in OWL saying as much about the OWL world view as the information it 
is intended to capture?

I don't think it would actually matter too much in practice if the 
primary application of  OWL wordnets is to provide common reference 
points between disparate ontologies or data sets, but it might suggest 
to what extent such mappings could be relied on. One of the proposed TF 
objectives is to provide guidelines for wordnets-to-OWL translation, so 
perhaps this might call for a little further analysis. I'm not familiar 
with the literature, presumably there will have been plenty of previous 
attempts at mapping from human lexicons to formal structures - is there 
any way of judging which approaches were successful? 

Cheers,
Danny.

[1] http://citeseer.ist.psu.edu/gangemi01conceptual.html

-- 

Raw
http://dannyayers.com

Received on Saturday, 12 June 2004 06:41:47 UTC