Dear all, (01)
I also think it is good to be very explicit about what Adam and
others have recently mentioned about the fact that mixing
statements about linguistic terms and ontological considerations
is a recipe for endless and fruitless debate. Ontology
and language are subject to differing concerns. Unfortunately
within work on ontology the relationship between ontology
and language is often trivialized. One needs sufficiently
solid bases in both areas to say sensible things. Precisely
because of the issues of contextualization and interpretation,
the links between any ontological categorization and
linguistically motivated categorizations will have to
be sophisticated and complex. One can do a lot with simpler
relationships, but need then to be aware that one is
then building particular contextualization decisions into the
account. (02)
In our approach we have distinct organizations for linguistically
motivated categorizations (the Generalized Upper Model) and
ontologically motivated categorizations of the traditional
kind (we work here with DOLCE a lot). *Both* organizations are
subject to principles of ontological engineering however.
We then try to *relate* the two using theory morphisms just as
we would relate distinct ontologies/subontologies. This
is the only way that we have seen of doing justice both
to contextualization (because the morphisms that are constructed
must be done so according to context
in order to construe linguistic categorizations
with sufficient flexibility) and to the contributions of the individual
components. This is to take the explicit representation of
the distinct nature of these kinds of organization
considerable further than is commonly done. (03)
One further aspect we are considering is to
place the linguistically-motivated categorizations within
the DOLCE descriptions&situations framework: thus the
linguistically motivated 'ontology' becomes a perspective
on the ground ontology of, e.g., DOLCE. (04)
Getting the relation between ontology and language (and particularly
formalized approaches to linguistic semantics) right is one of
our main research goals and has been for a long time. Making
this strand of discussion an activity in its own right would
be of considerable interest to us therefore if others
on this list are also so inclined. (05)
Best,
John B. (06)
------------------------------------------------------
John Bateman
http://www.fb10.uni-bremen.de/ontology (07)
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