Three-tier Structure of Information in the Content of Utterance (essay on the Distributed Grammar program)

The idea of the three-tier information structure in the content of utterances is the result of research carried out in a transdisciplinary spirit, within sciences such as linguistics, psychology, logic and computer science. The theory of Meta-Informative Centering (MIC) of attention, which borrows the concept of attention centering from psychology and the concept of information from computer science, makes it possible to treat ―information structures" or "thematic-rhematic structures" as strictly dependent on the canonical form of utterances (as the manifestation of predication). Thus, an important feature of the MIC theory is its reference to predication, and in particular to the language of classical logic (first-order predicate logic). In the light of MIC theory, "information structure" appears in fact to be a structure of meta-information (representing "information about information") with respect to orthoinformation (proper information; i.e. situation frame, its types and aspects, roles, spatio-temporal anchors etc.) contained in the utterances. It is the theory of Associative Semantics (AS), which is being developed in parallel to the theory of MIC, which constitutes the layer of ortho-information. However, the foundational role in the structure of information content of utterances is played by para-information ("information which is similar or related to some other information"). In order to treat systematically the structure of information (ortho-, meta- and para-information) as contained in language utterances, and for representing their fundamental components, we proposed using ―formal concepts‖ belonging to the rapidly developing new field of research in computer science under the general name of ―Formal Concept Analysis‖ (FCA). The most important operations (responsible for the structure of information contained in the body of the utterances) are as follows: (a) selection (for building conceptual areas of interest in the para-information tier), (b) configuration (for building relationships between concepts in the ortho-information tier) and (c) centering (secondary selection of concepts for transmitting in the meta-information tier), while the most important operations (responsible for the structure of utterances) are: (a) nesting (for building utterances as units of discourse in the profile, across the tiers) and (b) encapsulation (for designating the conceptual space and combining conceptual representations with the language). In this paper we present one of the many areas of application of the described theoretical foundation, namely: word order in linguistic typology. Research taking into account the abovementioned three kinds of information constitutes a contribution to the construction of a coherent theoretical framework for Distributed Grammar (i.e. multi-tier grammar with a generalized idiomatics).The idea of the three-tier information structure in the content of utterances is the result of research carried out in a transdisciplinary spirit, within sciences such as linguistics, psychology, logic and computer science. The theory of Meta-Informative Centering (MIC) of attention, which borrows the concept of attention centering from psychology and the concept of information from computer science, makes it possible to treat ―information structures" or "thematic-rhematic structures" as strictly dependent on the canonical form of utterances (as the manifestation of predication). Thus, an important feature of the MIC theory is its reference to predication, and in particular to the language of classical logic (first-order predicate logic). In the light of MIC theory, "information structure" appears in fact to be a structure of meta-information (representing "information about information") with respect to orthoinformation (proper information; i.e. situation frame, its types and aspects, roles, spatio-temporal anchors etc.) contained in the utterances. It is the theory of Associative Semantics (AS), which is being developed in parallel to the theory of MIC, which constitutes the layer of ortho-information. However, the foundational role in the structure of information content of utterances is played by para-information ("information which is similar or related to some other information"). In order to treat systematically the structure of information (ortho-, meta- and para-information) as contained in language utterances, and for representing their fundamental components, we proposed using ―formal concepts‖ belonging to the rapidly developing new field of research in computer science under the general name of ―Formal Concept Analysis‖ (FCA). The most important operations (responsible for the structure of information contained in the body of the utterances) are as follows: (a) selection (for building conceptual areas of interest in the para-information tier), (b) configuration (for building relationships between concepts in the ortho-information tier) and (c) centering (secondary selection of concepts for transmitting in the meta-information tier), while the most important operations (responsible for the structure of utterances) are: (a) nesting (for building utterances as units of discourse in the profile, across the tiers) and (b) encapsulation (for designating the conceptual space and combining conceptual representations with the language). In this paper we present one of the many areas of application of the described theoretical foundation, namely: word order in linguistic typology. Research taking into account the abovementioned three kinds of information constitutes a contribution to the construction of a coherent theoretical framework for Distributed Grammar (i.e. multi-tier grammar with a generalized idiomatics)

A unified framework for building ontological theories with application and testing in the field of clinical trials

The objective of this research programme is to contribute to the establishment of the emerging science of Formal Ontology in Information Systems via a collaborative project involving researchers from a range of disciplines including philosophy, logic, computer science, linguistics, and the medical sciences. The re­searchers will work together on the construction of a unified formal ontology, which means: a general framework for the construction of ontological theories in specific domains. The framework will be constructed using the axiomatic-deductive method of modern formal ontology. It will be tested via a series of applications relating to on-going work in Leipzig on medical taxonomies and data dictionaries in the context of clinical trials. This will lead to the production of a domain-specific ontology which is designed to serve as a basis for applications in the medical field

Ontological theory for ontological engineering: Biomedical systems information integration

Software application ontologies have the potential to become the keystone in state-of-the-art information management techniques. It is expected that these ontologies will support the sort of reasoning power required to navigate large and complex terminologies correctly and efficiently. Yet, there is one problem in particular that continues to stand in our way. As these terminological structures increase in size and complexity, and the drive to integrate them inevitably swells, it is clear that the level of consistency required for such navigation will become correspondingly difficult to maintain. While descriptive semantic representations are certainly a necessary component to any adequate ontology-based system, so long as ontology engineers rely solely on semantic information, without a sound ontological theory informing their modeling decisions, this goal will surely remain out of reach. In this paper we describe how Language and Computing nv (L&C), along with The Institute for Formal Ontology and Medical Information Sciences (IFOMIS), are working towards developing and implementing just such a theory, combining the open software architecture of L&C’s LinkSuiteTM with the philosophical rigor of IFOMIS’s Basic Formal Ontology. In this way we aim to move beyond the more or less simple controlled vocabularies that have dominated the industry to date

25 years development of knowledge graph theory: the results and the challenge

The project on knowledge graph theory was begun in 1982. At the initial stage, the goal was to use graphs to represent knowledge in the form of an expert system. By the end of the 80's expert systems in medical and social science were developed successfully using knowledge graph theory. In the following stage, the goal of the project was broadened to represent natural language by knowledge graphs. Since then, this theory can be considered as one of the methods to deal with natural language processing. At the present time knowledge graph representation has been proven to be a method that is language independent. The theory can be applied to represent almost any characteristic feature in various languages.\ud The objective of the paper is to summarize the results of 25 years of development of knowledge graph theory and to point out some challenges to be dealt with in the next stage of the development of the theory. The paper will give some highlight on the difference between this theory and other theories like that of conceptual graphs which has been developed and presented by Sowa in 1984 and other theories like that of formal concept analysis by Wille or semantic networks

Ontology mapping: the state of the art

Ontology mapping is seen as a solution provider in today's landscape of ontology research. As the number of ontologies that are made publicly available and accessible on the Web increases steadily, so does the need for applications to use them. A single ontology is no longer enough to support the tasks envisaged by a distributed environment like the Semantic Web. Multiple ontologies need to be accessed from several applications. Mapping could provide a common layer from which several ontologies could be accessed and hence could exchange information in semantically sound manners. Developing such mapping has beeb the focus of a variety of works originating from diverse communities over a number of years. In this article we comprehensively review and present these works. We also provide insights on the pragmatics of ontology mapping and elaborate on a theoretical approach for defining ontology mapping

Knowledge formalization in experience feedback processes : an ontology-based approach

Because of the current trend of integration and interoperability of industrial systems, their size and complexity continue to grow making it more difficult to analyze, to understand and to solve the problems that happen in their organizations. Continuous improvement methodologies are powerful tools in order to understand and to solve problems, to control the effects of changes and finally to capitalize knowledge about changes and improvements. These tools involve suitably represent knowledge relating to the concerned system. Consequently, knowledge management (KM) is an increasingly important source of competitive advantage for organizations. Particularly, the capitalization and sharing of knowledge resulting from experience feedback are elements which play an essential role in the continuous improvement of industrial activities. In this paper, the contribution deals with semantic interoperability and relates to the structuring and the formalization of an experience feedback (EF) process aiming at transforming information or understanding gained by experience into explicit knowledge. The reuse of such knowledge has proved to have significant impact on achieving themissions of companies. However, the means of describing the knowledge objects of an experience generally remain informal. Based on an experience feedback process model and conceptual graphs, this paper takes domain ontology as a framework for the clarification of explicit knowledge and know-how, the aim of which is to get lessons learned descriptions that are significant, correct and applicable