Denise, (01)
But WordNet does have hypernymy (parent or broader-than) and hyponymy
(child or narrower-than) links between words (synsets), no? So it's
very close to a thesaurus. You are right that you cannot use a
thesaurus for concepts or describing meaning, since thesauri are about
term relationships. I think your rich domain thesaurus is probably a
conceptual model. (02)
The usual range of semantic models I characterize as, from less to more
expressive semantics: taxonomy, thesaurus, conceptual model, logical
theory, with the addendum that taxonomies are weak (arbitrary
parent-child relation) or strong (narrowerThan or subClass parent-child
relations, the former for terms as in the taxonomic backbone of a
thesaurus, the latter for concepts in a conceptual model or logical
theory's taxonomic backbone). Conceptual models can be viewed as weak
ontologies; logical theories as strong ontologies, with the primary
distinction being that logical theories are expressed in a knowledge
representation language that is logic-based, hence supports machine
semantic interpretation, and conceptual models do not. (03)
You can review my recent Ontolog 2 part briefing (Jan. 12 & 19, 2006)
on these distinctions (using the Ontology Spectrum) "What is an
Ontology: The Range of Semantic Models" at:
http://ontolog.cim3.net/cgi-bin/wiki.pl?ConferenceCall_2006_01_12,
i.e.: (04)
http://ontolog.cim3.net/file/resource/presentation/LeoObrst_20060112/On
tologySpectrumSemanticModels--LeoObrst_20060112.ppt. (05)
Also an audio track of both talks are available at: (06)
Part 1, Jan. 12, 2006, 1 Hour 40 Minutes, Recording File Size: 23.4 MB
(in mp3 format):
http://ontolog.cim3.net/file/resource/presentation/LeoObrst_20060112/On
tologySpectrumSemanticModels--LeoObrst_Recording-2473397-874999_2006011
2.mp3 (07)
Part 2, Jan. 19, 2006, 1 Hour 42 Minutes, Recording File Size: 23.9 MB
(in mp3 format):
http://ontolog.cim3.net/file/resource/presentation/LeoObrst_20060112/On
tologySpectrumSemanticModels--LeoObrst_Recording-2496706-401969_2006011
9.mp3 (08)
Thanks,
Leo (09)
_____________________________________________
Dr. Leo Obrst The MITRE Corporation, Information Semantics
lobrst@xxxxxxxxx Center for Innovative Computing & Informatics
Voice: 703-983-6770 7515 Colshire Drive, M/S H305
Fax: 703-983-1379 McLean, VA 22102-7508, USA (010)
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Sent: Wednesday, March 01, 2006 11:14 AM
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Subject: RE: Re:[ontac-forum] Future directions for ontologiesand
terminologies (011)
Leo, (012)
I think this is an accurate way of characterizing the differences -
with one
qualification. WordNet is only a synonym set - it is not a thesaurus.
We
looked at WordNet many, many years ago and found we could not use it to
describe
any of our domains in a meaningful way. (013)
We opted instead for a rich domain thesaurus based on concepts and
using a
richer set of semantic relationships. We actually find that the same
relationships among the concepts can be used to define relationships
among the
entities (ie the values of relationships among entities in our
data/entity
models). The difference in the two is that the data model for concepts
may be
simpler than the data model for other types of entities. It is
equivalent to
the difference between the 'name of a country' and the data model for a
country
entity. For us, though, WordNet did not provide sufficient support
for the
concept level - name of the country. (014)
I hope this makes sense to others. My own thought model is so adapted
to this
approach that I'm never sure when I'm explaining it clearly. (015)
Best regards,
Denise (016)
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