Definitions in ontologies

Definitions vary according to context of use and target audience. They must be made relevant for each context to fulfill their cognitive and linguistic goals. This involves adapting their logical structure, type of content, and form to each context of use. We examine from these perspectives the case of definitions in ontologies

Challenges to knowledge representation in multilingual contexts

To meet the increasing demands of the complex inter-organizational processes and the demand for continuous innovation and internationalization, it is evident that new forms of organisation are being adopted, fostering more intensive collaboration processes and sharing of resources, in what can be called collaborative networks (Camarinha-Matos, 2006:03). Information and knowledge are crucial resources in collaborative networks, being their management fundamental processes to optimize. Knowledge organisation and collaboration systems are thus important instruments for the success of collaborative networks of organisations having been researched in the last decade in the areas of computer science, information science, management sciences, terminology and linguistics. Nevertheless, research in this area didn’t give much attention to multilingual contexts of collaboration, which pose specific and challenging problems. It is then clear that access to and representation of knowledge will happen more and more on a multilingual setting which implies the overcoming of difficulties inherent to the presence of multiple languages, through the use of processes like localization of ontologies. Although localization, like other processes that involve multilingualism, is a rather well-developed practice and its methodologies and tools fruitfully employed by the language industry in the development and adaptation of multilingual content, it has not yet been sufficiently explored as an element of support to the development of knowledge representations - in particular ontologies - expressed in more than one language. Multilingual knowledge representation is then an open research area calling for cross-contributions from knowledge engineering, terminology, ontology engineering, cognitive sciences, computational linguistics, natural language processing, and management sciences. This workshop joined researchers interested in multilingual knowledge representation, in a multidisciplinary environment to debate the possibilities of cross-fertilization between knowledge engineering, terminology, ontology engineering, cognitive sciences, computational linguistics, natural language processing, and management sciences applied to contexts where multilingualism continuously creates new and demanding challenges to current knowledge representation methods and techniques. In this workshop six papers dealing with different approaches to multilingual knowledge representation are presented, most of them describing tools, approaches and results obtained in the development of ongoing projects. In the first case, Andrés Domínguez Burgos, Koen Kerremansa and Rita Temmerman present a software module that is part of a workbench for terminological and ontological mining, Termontospider, a wiki crawler that aims at optimally traverse Wikipedia in search of domainspecific texts for extracting terminological and ontological information. The crawler is part of a tool suite for automatically developing multilingual termontological databases, i.e. ontologicallyunderpinned multilingual terminological databases. In this paper the authors describe the basic principles behind the crawler and summarized the research setting in which the tool is currently tested. In the second paper, Fumiko Kano presents a work comparing four feature-based similarity measures derived from cognitive sciences. The purpose of the comparative analysis presented by the author is to verify the potentially most effective model that can be applied for mapping independent ontologies in a culturally influenced domain. For that, datasets based on standardized pre-defined feature dimensions and values, which are obtainable from the UNESCO Institute for Statistics (UIS) have been used for the comparative analysis of the similarity measures. The purpose of the comparison is to verify the similarity measures based on the objectively developed datasets. According to the author the results demonstrate that the Bayesian Model of Generalization provides for the most effective cognitive model for identifying the most similar corresponding concepts existing for a targeted socio-cultural community. In another presentation, Thierry Declerck, Hans-Ulrich Krieger and Dagmar Gromann present an ongoing work and propose an approach to automatic extraction of information from multilingual financial Web resources, to provide candidate terms for building ontology elements or instances of ontology concepts. The authors present a complementary approach to the direct localization/translation of ontology labels, by acquiring terminologies through the access and harvesting of multilingual Web presences of structured information providers in the field of finance, leading to both the detection of candidate terms in various multilingual sources in the financial domain that can be used not only as labels of ontology classes and properties but also for the possible generation of (multilingual) domain ontologies themselves. In the next paper, Manuel Silva, António Lucas Soares and Rute Costa claim that despite the availability of tools, resources and techniques aimed at the construction of ontological artifacts, developing a shared conceptualization of a given reality still raises questions about the principles and methods that support the initial phases of conceptualization. These questions become, according to the authors, more complex when the conceptualization occurs in a multilingual setting. To tackle these issues the authors present a collaborative platform – conceptME - where terminological and knowledge representation processes support domain experts throughout a conceptualization framework, allowing the inclusion of multilingual data as a way to promote knowledge sharing and enhance conceptualization and support a multilingual ontology specification. In another presentation Frieda Steurs and Hendrik J. Kockaert present us TermWise, a large project dealing with legal terminology and phraseology for the Belgian public services, i.e. the translation office of the ministry of justice, a project which aims at developing an advanced tool including expert knowledge in the algorithms that extract specialized language from textual data (legal documents) and whose outcome is a knowledge database including Dutch/French equivalents for legal concepts, enriched with the phraseology related to the terms under discussion. Finally, Deborah Grbac, Luca Losito, Andrea Sada and Paolo Sirito report on the preliminary results of a pilot project currently ongoing at UCSC Central Library, where they propose to adapt to subject librarians, employed in large and multilingual Academic Institutions, the model used by translators working within European Union Institutions. The authors are using User Experience (UX) Analysis in order to provide subject librarians with a visual support, by means of “ontology tables” depicting conceptual linking and connections of words with concepts presented according to their semantic and linguistic meaning. The organizers hope that the selection of papers presented here will be of interest to a broad audience, and will be a starting point for further discussion and cooperation

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

The cognitive shift in terminology and specialized translation

This article offers a critical analysis and overview of terminology theories with special reference to scientific and technical translation. The study of specialized language is undergoing a cognitive shift, which is conducive to a greater emphasis on meaning as well as conceptual structures underlying texts and language in general. Terminology theory seems to be evolving from prescriptive to descriptive with a growing focus on the study of specialized language units from a social, linguistic and cognitive perspective. In consonance with this, new voices are beginning to be heard, which offer different and complementary perspectives on specialized language and translation.Este artículo propone un análisis crítico y una visión global de las teorías terminológicas con especial atención a la traducción científica y técnica. El estudio de los tecnolectos está sometido en la actualidad a un cambio hacia el cognitivismo, que a su vez conduce a un énfasis mucho mayor tanto en el significado como en las estructuras conceptuales que subyacen en los textos y en la lengua en general. La terminología parece estar pasando del prescriptivismo al descriptivismo, con un interés creciente por enfocar el estudio de las unidades de los tecnolectos desde una perspectiva social, lingüística y cognitiva. En esta misma línea, comienzan a oírse nuevas voces que ofrecen perspectivas diferentes y complementarias en torno a los tecnolectos y la traducción

Supporting collaboration in multilingual ontology specification: the conceptME approach

Despite the availability of tools, resources and techniques aimed at the construction of ontological artifacts, developing a shared conceptualization of a given reality still raises questions about the principles and methods that support the initial phases of conceptualization. These questions become more complex when the conceptualization occurs in a multilingual setting. To tackle these issues a collaborative platform – conceptME - was developed where terminological and knowledge representation processes support domain experts throughout a conceptualization framework, allowing the inclusion of multilingual data to promote knowledge sharing and enhance conceptualization.info:eu-repo/semantics/publishedVersio

\u2018Ontology\u2019 and Terminological Frameworks: an Overview of Issues and Term(s)

This paper addresses the question of the protean nature of \u2018ontology\u2019, with special attention paid to its use within the domain of terminology theories and applications. This term is widely used nowadays within various disciplines for designating different types of organising relational frameworks. Yet, its designations remain unvaried and, in this way, it causes ambiguity. The multifaceted nature of the so-called \u2018ontology\u2019 hinders the possibility of providing an unambiguous defi nition. This is mainly due to the multi- and interdisciplinary dimension of this notion, which is outlined here through an overview of its application within philosophy, information science, and linguistic disciplines. The reference model of ontology that is applied nowadays in various disciplines corresponds to an object, or more precisely, to various types of objects which are all based on a relational framework, and are used for organising different types of knowledge units. This view differs from the original value of ontology that was shaped within philosophy as a purely theoretical model, a global and universally-valid abstract classifi cation of reality. Therefore, it seems appropriate that this term should acquire greater precision especially when it is used within the domain of terminology

Terminology as a system of knowledge representation: An overview

Terminology has an important role in the framework of specialised knowledge, especially as regards its elaboration, representation and transmission through verbal language. This study focuses on the nature of knowledge that is organised in terminological collections. Terms are interpreted as the units where the mental, linguistic, communicative, and referential facets of specialised knowledge coalesce. Terminology schools belonging to different traditions have attributed distinct values to the notion of term and to its content, as a consequence of the underlying terminological and linguistic theories used as reference (\ua7 2.). Accordingly, terminology theories and applications display the prevalence of either a prescriptive or descriptive approach; the former characterises the General Theory of Terminology, the latter is typical of contemporary schools related to socioterminology, textual terminology, the sociocognitive approach, and the communicative theory of terminology (\ua7 3.). An analysis of the nature of knowledge as represented in terminology works makes it possible to recognise the importance of representing the system of knowledge through a relational scheme of concepts and terms which allows the user to delineate the definition of the single units of knowledge (\ua7 4.). This model, which has been outlined since W\ufcster\u2019s theory as a hierarchical frame of relations and dependences, can be described in terms of an ontology, also as a result of the recent integration of terminology with information science. Even though ontology offers a model of representation of specialised knowledge which is relatively neutral from the linguistic and cultural point of view, this structure can be integrated with the cognitive, sociological and pragmatic facets of terms, which have acquired a growing importance in contemporary terminology. In this way ontology remains a basic component of a satisfactory representation of concept systems, even when the analytical perspective is interlinguistic and intercultural, as is the case with the applications that follow the termontography method