Re: [ontolog-forum] Fact Guru, Controlled NLs, and OOR

[Adrian Walker <adriandwalker@xxxxxxxxx>]

Hi Ed --

Not just a tower of turtles all the way down, but an exponentially wider downward growing pyramid of turtles!    (:-)

                                   -- Adrian 

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Adrian Walker
Reengineering

On Wed, Mar 30, 2011 at 4:38 PM, Ed Barkmeyer <edbark@xxxxxxxx> wrote:

Leo Obrst. wrote:
> The way to distinguish terminology and ontology is that you use terms (natural language words, phrases) to refer to "concepts" (ideas, referents, categories, etc.) So the former is semantics, i.e., ways of referring (quite often just lexical semantics, but you can imagine a phrase "gasoline tank" or "steel crankshaft, corroded and discarded"), the latter is ontology, i.e., what is referred to, typically real world objects or categories.
>
> You may also use a term as a label for a concept, which is fine if you understand the distinction, but the concept could be labeled KDKJKDLK123 in the ontology and that really is just as valid, if perverse (though you cannot interpret it semantically as an English speaker unless you see the term in the terminology that refers to it). And note that there is not a 1-1 relationship between terms and concepts, but a many-many, depending on the language and of course the ontology.
>

There is a particularly cute trick in one of the ISO TC37 (Vocabulary
and Terminology) standards (ISO 1087-1, I think).  It defines
'designation' as the relationship between an '_expression_' (variously
called the 'sign' or 'signifier' or 'term') and a 'concept', with the
statement: "In the speech community that uses the designation, the
signifier refers to the concept and denotes its instances in a world of
interest."

This is exactly the kind of wording one should expect from a standards
body -- it tries to please all the factions by integrating two otherwise
distinct definitions.  And some participating expert will tell you,
privately, but not in the standard,  that the distinction between
'refers to' and 'denotes' is the difference between 'mention' and 'use',
thereby further complicating the issue.  The clarification of one term
thus creates four new undefined terms.  In so many words, sorting out
the terminology for terminology concepts seems to be a problem for
terminologists.   It is turtles all the way down... :-)

-Ed

> Thanks,
> Leo
> _____________________________________________
> Dr. Leo Obrst        The MITRE Corporation, Information Semantics
> lobrst@xxxxxxxxx     Information Discovery & Understanding, Command & Control Center
> Voice: 703-983-6770  7515 Colshire Drive, M/S H305
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>
>
>
>
> -----Original Message-----
> From: ontolog-forum-bounces@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx [mailto:ontolog-forum-bounces@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx] On Behalf Of Mike Bennett
> Sent: Wednesday, March 30, 2011 1:07 PM
> To: [ontolog-forum]
> Subject: Re: [ontolog-forum] Fact Guru, Controlled NLs, and OOR
>
> We made a point of not including words / lexical terms as
> ontology objects, i.e. no use of OWL Equivalent Class.
>
> As Mike Atkin puts it, people will argue forever about the
> meaning of a word, but will soon reach consensus on the concepts
> themselves. To include those in the ontology actually makes the
> ontology harder to explain to business stakeholders.
>
> Also does that mean you have two separate theories of meaning
> within the same model? How do you distinguish those e.g. is there
> is some obvious visual distinction between the sets of terms that
> come under the two theories?
>
> Mike
>
> On 30/03/2011 17:49, Matthew West wrote:
>
>> Dear Mike,
>>
>> One of the things we did in ISO 15926 was to distinguish logical
>> terms/concepts/meanings from their representation by words/lexical
>> terms/phrases, but treating the lexical terms as first class objects in the
>> ontology itself, rather than things outside it.
>>
>> Regards
>>
>> Matthew West
>> Information  Junction
>> Tel: +44 1489 880185
>> Mobile: +44 750 3385279
>> Skype: dr.matthew.west
>> matthew.west@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
>> http://www.informationjunction.co.uk/
>> http://www.matthew-west.org.uk/
>>
>> This email originates from Information Junction Ltd. Registered in England
>> and Wales No. 6632177.
>> Registered office: 2 Brookside, Meadow Way, Letchworth Garden City,
>> Hertfordshire, SG6 3JE.
>>
>>
>>
>>
>>
>>> -----Original Message-----
>>> From: ontolog-forum-bounces@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx [mailto:ontolog-forum-
>>> bounces@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx] On Behalf Of Mike Bennett
>>> Sent: 30 March 2011 16:50
>>> To: [ontolog-forum]
>>> Subject: Re: [ontolog-forum] Fact Guru, Controlled NLs, and OOR
>>>
>>> That does sound interesting. I had a sort of "Aha" moment last
>>> week when we were talking about synonyms and heteronyms at an OMG
>>> / EDM Council event. It struck me that an ontology has formal
>>> definitions of concepts with synonyms, whereas a terminology is a
>>> set of words, with one or more meanings per word, and therefore
>>> has heteronyms. That's why for instance we have no concept of
>>> heteronym in our ontology. Nor (for similar reasons) do we have
>>> homonyms.
>>>
>>> No doubt for most people that's this week's glimpse into the
>>> obvious, but it made things come clear for me - ontologies and
>>> terminologies are complementary but different, so any tool that
>>> formally relates one to the other has to be good.
>>>
>>> Mike
>>>
>>> On 30/03/2011 15:05, John F. Sowa wrote:
>>>
>>>> We have discussed the relationships between ontologies and
>>>>
>>> terminologies
>>>
>>>> in many email threads.  Some people blur the distinction by saying
>>>>
>>> that
>>>
>>>> their terminologies are ontologies, and others make a sharp
>>>>
>>> distinction
>>>
>>>> between them.  But one point is clear:  the people who use
>>>>
>>> applications
>>>
>>>> only see terminologies, and the developers need to relate ontologies
>>>> to terminologies.
>>>>
>>>> A few weeks ago, I sent a note that mentioned Fact Guru by Doug Skuce
>>>> as tool that could help bridge the gap between terminologies and
>>>> ontologies.  In particular, FG could simplify the task of mapping
>>>> the terms of an terminology to the more formal ontology.  After the
>>>> development of the ontology, FG could be used to display either or
>>>> both, side by side.  For the Open Ontology Repository, FG could be
>>>> useful, but only if the software were available as open source.
>>>>
>>>> Therefore, I had a discussion with Doug about the possibility of
>>>> releasing the Fact Guru software as open source under the LGPL.
>>>> Doug agreed, and he is also planning to attend the Ontology Summit
>>>> on April 18.  He would be happy to discuss the use of FG with anyone
>>>> who may be interested.  On the cc list above, I added the email for
>>>> Doug Skuce and for John Talbot, who did most of the implementation.
>>>>
>>>> In the links below, note the wide range of sophistication of the
>>>> possible applications.  The Animals example was implemented by
>>>> Doug's 9-year-old daughter as a school project.  The SUMO example
>>>> was downloaded from the actual SUMO ontology.  For each term in
>>>> SUMO, FG shows both the English-like text and the axioms written
>>>> in KIF.
>>>>
>>>> John Sowa
>>>>
>>>> -------- Original Message --------
>>>> Subject: Fact Guru
>>>> Date: Fri, 28 Jan 2011 21:31:05 -0500
>>>> From: John F. Sowa<sowa@xxxxxxxxxxx>
>>>> To: [ontolog-forum]<ontolog-forum@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>
>>>> CC: Doug Skuce<drskuce@xxxxxxxxx>
>>>>
>>>> I was talking with an old friend, Doug Skuce, who taught AI and
>>>> knowledge engineering at the University of Ottawa for many years.
>>>> He and his students and colleagues have developed some software
>>>> that could be valuable for designing and supporting ontologies.
>>>>
>>>> In the late 80s he developed a knowledge acquisition tool called
>>>> CODE (Conceptually Oriented Development Environment) in Smalltalk.
>>>> Since CODE did not run on the web, he designed a new version called
>>>> Fact Guru in the late 90s.  FG can be used to organize a knowledge
>>>> base of any kind and present it in a highly readable way;
>>>>
>>>>       http://www.site.uottawa.ca/~tcl/factguru1/FactGuru.pdf
>>>>
>>>> Following is a blurb from the web site:
>>>>
>>>>       With Fact Guru you can improve understanding by:
>>>>
>>>>         * storing facts grouped by subject in a highly structured
>>>>           knowledge base.
>>>>
>>>>         * searching the knowledge base to find just the fact you need
>>>>
>>>>         * comparing subjects to see a comparison matrix of differences
>>>>
>>>>         * viewing subjects as a graph to see relationships between
>>>>
>>> them
>>>
>>>> For a beginner's example that uses only English, see the knowledge
>>>> base of Canadian Animals, which was implemented by Doug's nine year
>>>> old daughter.  Click on any animal name to find a collection of
>>>> information about it:
>>>>
>>>>       http://www.site.uottawa.ca/~tcl/factguru1/animals/index.html
>>>>
>>>> More important for ontology is the use of Fact Guru to import,
>>>> organize, and display the top-level ontology of SUMO:
>>>>
>>>>       http://www.site.uottawa.ca/~tcl/factguru1/sumo/index.html
>>>>
>>>> For an example of a knowledge base about a technical subject,
>>>> see the Fact Guru KB about the Java programming language, which
>>>> Doug used for teaching a course on Java:
>>>>
>>>>       http://www.site.uottawa.ca/~tcl/factguru1/java/index.html
>>>>
>>>> This KB is important for two reasons:  (1) it is cross linked
>>>> to an associated HTML document about Java; and (2) it is written
>>>> in a version of controlled English called ClearTalk.
>>>>
>>>> Doug is currently working with some programmers who are
>>>> reimplementing Fact Guru with the Drupal content management
>>>> software in order to organize and relate multiple knowledge
>>>> bases.  This could be useful for the Open Ontology Repository.
>>>>
>>>> I thought that participants in Ontolog Forum might express
>>>> their wish list about features that would be useful for
>>>> supporting ontologies and their applications.
>>>>
>>>> John Sowa
>>>>
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>>>>
>>>>
>>> --
>>> Mike Bennett
>>> Director
>>> Hypercube Ltd.
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>
>
> --
> Mike Bennett
> Director
> Hypercube Ltd.
> 89 Worship Street
> London EC2A 2BF
> Tel: +44 (0) 20 7917 9522
> Mob: +44 (0) 7721 420 730
> www.hypercube.co.uk
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--
Edward J. Barkmeyer                        Email: edbark@xxxxxxxx
National Institute of Standards & Technology
Manufacturing Systems Integration Division
100 Bureau Drive, Stop 8263                Tel: +1 301-975-3528
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 and have not been reviewed by any Government authority."

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