The issue of multiple meanings for words is a key reason that ontologies
need to be separated from terminologies. Of course, the concepts and
relations in each ontology needs to have a name, but that name should
not be confused with the natural language words and terms that may
designate it. (01)
It is useful for an ontology to have mappings between NL terms and the
elements in the ontology. But such systems should both allow for single
NL terms to denote multiple terms in the ontology and for multiple
NL terms to denote the same term in the ontology. The mapping between
NL terms and terms in a single ontology should be many-to-many. (02)
One useful way to ensure that those who look at an encoded ontology would
not confuse the terms in the ontology with NL terms would be to require
all terms in the ontology to have multi-word names. E.g., instead of
naming an ontological concept "Bank", the name could be "BankOfWatercourse",
"Bank_FinancialInstitution", "Bank_FinancialBuilding", "BankOfEquipment",
or something else depending upon what is meant. Do this even for simple
terms; distinguish "Person_Human" from "LegalPerson", which would in
certain contexts include "CorporatePerson"s as a subclass. (03)
-- doug foxvog (04)
On Tue, May 3, 2011 10:29, David Eddy said:
> On 2011-05-03, at 9:16 AM, John F. Sowa wrote:
>
>> My recommendation for anyone who is trying to define anything is
>> to check a good dictionary for an independent opinion. (05)
> Agreed.
>
> But what about the very common situation where neither the word/
> phrase not the definition is in any of the "professional" dictionaries? (06)
> Much of the language inside an organization—e.g. professional jargon,
> slang, acronyms, etc.—does not appear in formal dictionaries. (07)
> By example, George Miller's "Ambiguous Words" http://
> www.kurzweilai.net/ambiguous-words offers an average of 10 meanings
> per word.
>
> My prototype dictionary has an average of 34 meanings per word/term.
>
> ___________________
> David Eddy
> deddy@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
>
>
> _________________________________________________________________
> Message Archives: http://ontolog.cim3.net/forum/ontolog-forum/
> Config Subscr: http://ontolog.cim3.net/mailman/listinfo/ontolog-forum/
> Unsubscribe: mailto:ontolog-forum-leave@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
> Shared Files: http://ontolog.cim3.net/file/
> Community Wiki: http://ontolog.cim3.net/wiki/
> To join: http://ontolog.cim3.net/cgi-bin/wiki.pl?WikiHomePage#nid1J
>
> (08)
=============================================================
doug foxvog doug@xxxxxxxxxx http://ProgressiveAustin.org (09)
"I speak as an American to the leaders of my own nation. The great
initiative in this war is ours. The initiative to stop it must be ours."
- Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.
============================================================= (010)
_________________________________________________________________
Message Archives: http://ontolog.cim3.net/forum/ontolog-forum/
Config Subscr: http://ontolog.cim3.net/mailman/listinfo/ontolog-forum/
Unsubscribe: mailto:ontolog-forum-leave@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
Shared Files: http://ontolog.cim3.net/file/
Community Wiki: http://ontolog.cim3.net/wiki/
To join: http://ontolog.cim3.net/cgi-bin/wiki.pl?WikiHomePage#nid1J (011)
|