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

To: ontolog-forum@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
Cc: Doug Skuce <drskuce@xxxxxxxxx>, John Talbot <johntalbot@xxxxxxxxxx>
From: "John F. Sowa" <sowa@xxxxxxxxxxx>
Date: Thu, 31 Mar 2011 08:27:14 -0500
Message-id: <4D948132.3080302@xxxxxxxxxxx>
On 3/31/2011 3:12 AM, Chris Partridge wrote:
> One can regard a term, 'bank' as a type whose tokens are all its
> all its utterances/inscriptions. In this case, the relationship
> is many to many.  Or, one can have a finer grained conception.    (01)

Please note that when we are talking about terminologies, we are
*not* talking about unrestricted natural language.  Another term
for such lists is 'controlled vocabulary', which is the first
step toward a controlled NL -- or an ontology.    (02)

Professional terminologists have had many years of training
in lexicography and applied linguistics.  Their terminologies
may contain single words like 'hydrogen', but they will never
contain a single word like 'bank'.  For such things, they'll use
multi-word phrases, such as 'savings bank', 'investment bank',
'credit union', or some supertype, such as 'financial institution'.    (03)

Fact Guru has also been used by SMEs who are not professional
terminologists.  One example is the classification of Canadian
animals, which was written was Skuce's 9-year-old daughter. She
used the terminology from a book _The Mammals of Canada_ and a
web site of the Canadian Wildlife Service:    (04)

    http://www.site.uottawa.ca/~tcl/factguru1/animals/index.html    (05)

For another example, see the Astronomy knowledge base, which was
written by John Talbot and illustrates more features of FG:    (06)

    http://www.site.uottawa.ca/~tcl/factguru1/astronomy/index.html    (07)

The point I'm trying to make is that a good terminology has
taken a critical step away from the wild and woolly issues
of unrestricted NLs.    (08)

Furthermore, many well written textbooks and web sites developed
by domain experts (e.g., _The Mammals of Canada_ and the web site
for the Canadian Wildlife Service) are sufficiently accurate that
anyone who is as smart as a fifth grader can use a tool like FG.    (09)

John    (010)

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