- From: Uschold, Michael F <michael.f.uschold@boeing.com>
- Date: Thu, 24 Feb 2005 12:52:11 -0800
- To: "Aldo Gangemi" <a.gangemi@istc.cnr.it>, "Govoni, Darren" <DGovoni@mcdonaldbradley.com>
- Cc: <public-swbp-wg@w3.org>
- Message-ID: <823043AB1B52784D97754D186877B6CF0583C29F@xch-nw-12.nw.nos.boeing.com>
Aldo: Thanks for the definition of a lexical ontology. It seems to be rooted not in the nature of the beast, but more in the nature of how the beast is created, and to an extent, what it is intended to be used for. IF the starting point is a bunch of words or phrases that one wants to have a model of, *and* IF if the intended use entails [somethign like] language parsing, or lexical analysis of some sort... then one is more likley to call it a lexical ontology. On retrofitting 'lexical' terms to an otherwise non-lexical ontology... I suppose one shoudl always be able to come up with phrases that correspond to the meaning of the concepts in any ontology. Im not sure it helps or explains much to say this makes it a 'lexical ontology', since the phrases are kind of invented, not arising from an existing lexicon. Mike -----Original Message----- From: Aldo Gangemi [mailto:a.gangemi@istc.cnr.it] Sent: Thursday, February 24, 2005 8:14 AM To: Uschold, Michael F; Govoni, Darren Cc: public-swbp-wg@w3.org Subject: RE: [WNET],[OEP] OntoWordNet. A new large OWL ontology I agree with Mike: reliability and the right analytic detail for the task at hand are the essential requisites for a good ontology. How to get them, it's another story. How to measure them, still another. WordNet can be good for its generality, which is also its weakness. That's why the TF contains an activity aimed at indicating how to use WordNet to create something else. In the meantime, WordNet seems to be useful in many cases. Concerning lexical ontologies, there is a quite straightforward definition: if the elements of an ontology (classes, properties, and individuals, possibly axioms) depend primarily on the acceptance of existing lexical entries, the ontology can be called "lexical". WordNet, formal or not, it's such a case. But one can force this statement, by saying that if one is able to build a comprehensible paraphrase in some natural language of each ontology element, then that's a linguistically-sound ontology. Which holds for most (if not all) ontologies. Therefore, "lexical" depends on the agreement of lexicographers. In fact, if we use an ontology learning technique from corpora, and state the boundaries of lexical units according to dynamic functional properties, such an ontology would be very different from a "lexical" ontology. Cheers Aldo At 7:49 -0800 24-02-2005, Uschold, Michael F wrote: I have not seen any good definitions clarifying the difference between a 'lexical ontology' vs. other kinds of ontologies. "ontology=taxonomy with relations" is as good or better than any other view of an ontology, for the sake of discussion. However, the more important issue is not what is or is not an ontology, but rather, what purpose any 'ontology-like artifact' serves. Insofar as WN hyper/hyponymy links are inaccuarte, WN will not be reliable for supporting tasks that require reliable taxonomic inference. Insofar as WN lacks relation, WN will not provide good support for tasks that require them. Mike -----Original Message----- [MFU] From: Govoni, Darren [mailto:DGovoni@mcdonaldbradley.com] Sent: Wednesday, February 23, 2005 10:52 AM To: Uschold, Michael F; Aldo Gangemi; public-swbp-wg@w3.org Cc: brian.mcbride@hp.com; welty@us.ibm.com; schreiber@cs.vu.nl; glottolo@ilc.cnr.it; jjc@hplb.hpl.hp.com; swick@w3.org; danbri@w3.org; guarino@loa-cnr.it; oltramari@loa-cnr.it; ciaramita@loa-cnr.it Subject: RE: [WNET],[OEP] OntoWordNet. A new large OWL ontology Hi, I haven't chimed in much recently, but I've been working with WordNet, CYC and various ontologies here at McDonald Bradley for a while. I even made an OWL version of WordNet about a year ago. To the point on whether Wordnet is an ontology, I offer my opinion based on this, rather simple definition of ontology (forgetting where I first learned it). ontology=taxonomy with relations. I see WordNet as something of a lexical ontology. I lacks some of the machine esoteric, existential abstractions that something like CYC has. Mileage varies on the utility of that, IMO. Insomuch as the various OWL models we use manifest in much the same form (nodes or concepts connected by relations), our WordNet OWL model is every bit identical in nature to our CYC one. In our graphical ontology browser, they have exactly the same structure. That is, a graph (and RDF triples). Hard core ontologists will claim an ontology is a more formalized class/property/abstraction model (like CYC) whereas WordNet dismisses generic abstractions in favor of lexical symbols (i.e. human readble). Personally, I don't find the difference to be terribly salient. Plato basically posited words to be abstract symbols anyway. What we've found is that regardless of what you call it most ontologies are suitable up to a point before extending, modifying or mapping them to accomplish a goal is necessary. But that is not really a measure of 'ontology-ness', IMO. Just my thoughts. Darren Senior Architect McDonald Bradley -----Original Message----- From: public-swbp-wg-request@w3.org on behalf of Uschold, Michael F Sent: Wed 2/23/2005 1:04 PM To: Aldo Gangemi; public-swbp-wg@w3.org Cc: brian.mcbride@hp.com; welty@us.ibm.com; schreiber@cs.vu.nl; glottolo@ilc.cnr.it; jjc@hplb.hpl.hp.com; swick@w3.org; danbri@w3.org; guarino@loa-cnr.it; oltramari@loa-cnr.it; ciaramita@loa-cnr.it Subject: RE: [WNET],[OEP] OntoWordNet. A new large OWL ontology Here are a few thoughts about WordNet and ontologies gathered during last week's Dagstuhl Workshop on: Machine Learning for the Semantic Web The use of WN is more and more prevalent these days, especially among those working with ontologies. However, WN is designed as a lexical resource, not an ontology; it was never intended to be an ontology. Anyone who tries to use WN as an ontology quickly discovers that many of the hyper/hyponymy links are not proper taxonomic links at all. This raises the question as to whether and when WN should be used as an ontology at all. If you try to use a knife as a can-opener - beware. It sort of works kinda, but you need to be careful. I dont have an opinion on this, but thought I'd report on these views that I learned of. It would be useful to have something to say on this point in the TF outputs. Mike -----Original Message----- From: Aldo Gangemi [mailto:a.gangemi@istc.cnr.it <mailto:a.gangemi@istc.cnr.it> ] Sent: Wednesday, February 16, 2005 12:35 AM To: public-swbp-wg@w3.org Cc: Uschold, Michael F; brian.mcbride@hp.com; welty@us.ibm.com; schreiber@cs.vu.nl; glottolo@ilc.cnr.it; jjc@hplb.hpl.hp.com; swick@w3.org; danbri@w3.org; guarino@loa-cnr.it; oltramari@loa-cnr.it; ciaramita@loa-cnr.it Subject: [WNET],[OEP] OntoWordNet. A new large OWL ontology Hi all, second message for new [WNET] files. This message is about a new version of the WordNet datamodel that we started modelling months ago. First versions were encoded by Guus Schreiber and Brian McBride. This version (3) has been enlarged, commented, and checked after the original WordNet specifications by me. It's downloadable from: http://www.w3.org/2001/sw/BestPractices/WNET/wordnet_datamodel.owl <http://www.w3.org/2001/sw/BestPractices/WNET/wordnet_datamodel.owl> . Extensive documentation from original sources, and about the work carried out, is contained in the OWL file. Best Aldo -- Aldo Gangemi Research Scientist Laboratory for Applied Ontology Institute for Cognitive Sciences and Technology National Research Council (ISTC-CNR) Via Nomentana 56, 00161, Roma, Italy Tel: +390644161535 Fax: +390644161513 a.gangemi@istc.cnr.it ******************* !!! please don't use the old gangemi@ip.rm.cnr.it address, because it is under spam attack -- Aldo Gangemi Research Scientist Laboratory for Applied Ontology Institute for Cognitive Sciences and Technology National Research Council (ISTC-CNR) Via Nomentana 56, 00161, Roma, Italy Tel: +390644161535 Fax: +390644161513 a.gangemi@istc.cnr.it ******************* !!! please don't use the old gangemi@ip.rm.cnr.it address, because it is under spam attack
Received on Thursday, 24 February 2005 20:52:49 UTC