80,160 research outputs found
TimeML: An ontological mapping onto UIMA Type Systems
We present TeR, an UIMA Type System (Ferrucci and Lally, 2004) for event recognition, for temporal annotation in an Italian corpus. We map each TIMEML category (Pustejovsky et al., 2006) to one or more semantic types as they have been defined in the SIMPLE-CLIPS ontology (Ruimy et al., 2003). This mapping presents some advantages, such as the orthogonal inheritance that an event can acquire when derived from the ontology and a clearer definition of semantic roles when carried out by events. The mapping is implemented by means of a FINITE STATE AUTOMATON which uses semantic information collected from the SIMPLE-CLIPS ontology to analyze natural language texts
Natural language querying for video databases
Cataloged from PDF version of article.The video databases have become popular in various areas due to the recent advances in technology. Video archive systems need user-friendly interfaces to retrieve video frames. In this paper, a user interface based on natural language processing (NLP) to a video database system is described. The video database is based on a content-based spatio-temporal video data model. The data model is focused on the semantic content which includes objects, activities, and spatial properties of objects. Spatio-temporal relationships between video objects and also trajectories of moving objects can be queried with this data model. In this video database system, a natural language interface enables flexible querying. The queries, which are given as English sentences, are parsed using link parser. The semantic representations of the queries are extracted from their syntactic structures using information extraction techniques. The extracted semantic representations are used to call the related parts of the underlying video database system to return the results of the queries. Not only exact matches but similar objects and activities are also returned from the database with the help of the conceptual ontology module. This module is implemented using a distance-based method of semantic similarity search on the semantic domain-independent ontology, WordNet. (C) 2008 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved
A Typology of Temporal Data Imperfection
International audienceTemporal data may be subject to several types of imperfection (e.g., uncertainty, imprecision..). In this context, several typologies of data imperfections have been already proposed. However, these typologies cannot be applied to temporal data because of the complexity of this type of data and the specificity that it contains. Besides, to the best of our knowledge, there is no typology of temporal data imperfections. In this paper, we propose a typology of temporal data imperfections. Our typology is divided into direct imperfections of both numeric temporal data and natural language based temporal data, indirect imperfections that can be deduced from the direct ones and granularity (i.e., context - dependent temporal data) which is related to several factors that can interfer in specifying the imperfection type such as personâs profile and multiculturalism. We finish by representing an example of imprecise temporal data in PersonLink ontology
SOWL QL: Querying Spatio - Temporal Ontologies in OWL
We introduce SOWL QL, a query language for spatio-temporal information in ontologies. Buildingupon
SOWL (Spatio-Temporal OWL), an ontology for handling spatio-temporal information in OWL, SOWL QL supports querying over qualitative spatio-temporal information (expressed using natural language expressions such as âbeforeâ, âafterâ, ânorth ofâ, âsouth ofâ) rather than merely quantitative information (exact dates,
times, locations). SOWL QL extends SPARQL with a powerful set of temporal and spatial operators, including temporal Allen topological, spatial directional and topological operations or combinations of the above.
SOWL QL maintains simplicity of expression and also, upward and downward compatibility with SPARQL. Query translation in SOWL QL yields SPARQL queries implying that, querying spatio-temporal ontologies using SPARQL is still feasible but suffers from several drawbacks the most important of them being that, queries in SPARQL become particularly complicated and users must be familiar with the underlying spatio-temporal representation (the âN-ary relationsâ or the â4D-fluentsâ approach in this work). Finally, querying in SOWL QL is supported by the SOWL reasoner which is not part of the standard SPARQL translation. The run-time performance of SOWL QL has been assessed experimentally in a real data setting. A critical analysis of its performance is also presented
Tense, aspect and temporal reference
English exhibits a rich apparatus of tense, aspect, time adverbials and other expressions that
can be used to order states of affairs with respect to each other, or to locate them at a point in
time with respect to the moment of speech. Ideally one would want a semantics for these
expressions to demonstrate that an orderly relationship exists between any one expression and
the meanings it conveys. Yet most existing linguistic and formal semantic accounts leave
something to be desired in this respect, describing natural language temporal categories as
being full of ambiguities and indeterminacies, apparently escaping a uniform semantic description.
It will be argued that this anomaly stems from the assumption that the semantics of these
expressions is directly related to the linear conception of time familiar from temporal logic or
physics - an assumption which can be seen to underly most of the current work on tense and
aspect. According to these theories, the cognitive work involved in the processing of temporal
discourse consists of the ordering of events as points or intervals on a time line or a set of time
lines.
There are, however, good reasons for wondering whether this time concept really is the one
that our linguistic categories are most directly related to; it will be argued that a semantics of
temporally referring expressions and a theory of their use in defining the temporal relations of
events require a different and more complex structure underlying the meaning representations
than is commonly assumed. A semantics will be developed, based on the assumption that
categories like tense, aspect, aspectual adverbials and propositions refer to a mental representation
of events that is structured on other than purely temporal principles, and to which the
notion of a nucleus or consequentially related sequence of preparatory process, goal event and
consequent state is central.
It will be argued that the identification of the correct ontology is a logical preliminary to the
choice of any particular formal representation scheme, as well as being essential in the design
of natural language front-ends for temporal databases. It will be shown how the ontology
developed here can be implemented in a database that contains time-related information about
events and that is to be queried by means of natural language utterances
Conceptual Modelling and The Quality of Ontologies: Endurantism Vs. Perdurantism
Ontologies are key enablers for sharing precise and machine-understandable
semantics among different applications and parties. Yet, for ontologies to meet
these expectations, their quality must be of a good standard. The quality of an
ontology is strongly based on the design method employed. This paper addresses
the design problems related to the modelling of ontologies, with specific
concentration on the issues related to the quality of the conceptualisations
produced. The paper aims to demonstrate the impact of the modelling paradigm
adopted on the quality of ontological models and, consequently, the potential
impact that such a decision can have in relation to the development of software
applications. To this aim, an ontology that is conceptualised based on the
Object-Role Modelling (ORM) approach (a representative of endurantism) is
re-engineered into a one modelled on the basis of the Object Paradigm (OP) (a
representative of perdurantism). Next, the two ontologies are analytically
compared using the specified criteria. The conducted comparison highlights that
using the OP for ontology conceptualisation can provide more expressive,
reusable, objective and temporal ontologies than those conceptualised on the
basis of the ORM approach
Using Synchronic and Diachronic Relations for Summarizing Multiple Documents Describing Evolving Events
In this paper we present a fresh look at the problem of summarizing evolving
events from multiple sources. After a discussion concerning the nature of
evolving events we introduce a distinction between linearly and non-linearly
evolving events. We present then a general methodology for the automatic
creation of summaries from evolving events. At its heart lie the notions of
Synchronic and Diachronic cross-document Relations (SDRs), whose aim is the
identification of similarities and differences between sources, from a
synchronical and diachronical perspective. SDRs do not connect documents or
textual elements found therein, but structures one might call messages.
Applying this methodology will yield a set of messages and relations, SDRs,
connecting them, that is a graph which we call grid. We will show how such a
grid can be considered as the starting point of a Natural Language Generation
System. The methodology is evaluated in two case-studies, one for linearly
evolving events (descriptions of football matches) and another one for
non-linearly evolving events (terrorist incidents involving hostages). In both
cases we evaluate the results produced by our computational systems.Comment: 45 pages, 6 figures. To appear in the Journal of Intelligent
Information System
Technology Integration around the Geographic Information: A State of the Art
One of the elements that have popularized and facilitated the use of geographical information on a variety of computational applications has been the use of Web maps; this has opened new research challenges on different subjects, from locating places and people, the study of social behavior or the analyzing of the hidden structures of the terms used in a natural language query used for locating a place. However, the use of geographic information under technological features is not new, instead it has been part of a development and technological integration process. This paper presents a state of the art review about the application of geographic information under different approaches: its use on location based services, the collaborative user participation on it, its contextual-awareness, its use in the Semantic Web and the challenges of its use in natural languge queries. Finally, a prototype that integrates most of these areas is presented
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