Adam,
Yes I think you can just map it to Organization. Note however that though department is an instance of Organization, it in particular always has subOrganization(?DEPT, ?ORG) true of it, which isn't the case for any arbitrary instance of an organization.
The "department of literature" as Ian pointed out should be an example for sense #1 not #3. I think this is the crux. In combination with this example for sense #3, the sense #1 example "specialized division of a large organization" steers you away from something like an academic department. But in fact I do think that the sense #1 example is really similar to the semantics of an academic department. The field of study of the group of agents in a given deparment (including the other related materials such as publications and so on) make the department a "specialized division." The wording is a bit suggestive of corporations is all. So perhaps sense #1 suffices modulo considerations of mapping it to a relation.
Thanks
Erik
Adam Pease <adampease@earthlink.net> wrote:
Erik,
Many thanks for addressing a substantive technical issue. I see that Ian
has responded but I'll add my two cents.
There are three WordNet synsets for the English word "department"
1. A specialized division of a large organization; "you'll find it in the
hardware department"; "she got a job in the historical section of the
Treasury".
* SUMO Equivalents: subOrganizations
2. The territorial and administrative division of some countries (such as
France).
* SUMO Equivalents: GeopoliticalArea
3. A specialized sphere of knowledge; "baking is not my department"; "his
work established a new department of literature".
* SUMO Equivalents: Proposition
Each sense maps to a different SUMO concept. So, you are quite right that
in sense #1 a department has a chair, a location and so forth. However,
the SUMO t!
erm
Proposition is mapped to a different sense of "department",
which is the sense that means "sphere of knowledge". I'm a little unclear
on sense #3 in that the first sentence makes me think that it is just an
abstract Proposition, which the second sentence in sense #3 leads me to
believe that the mapping should be to FieldOfStudy.
One could argue about a noun being mapped to a Relation. This is a case
where the mapping isn't exact because it should really be to a "template"
logical expressions that addresses the logical meaning of the word in the
context of a sentence. For example
"Bill is in the hardware department." might be translated to something like
(exists (?P ?D ?O)
(and
(instance ?P Male)
(name "Bill" ?P)
(location ?P ?D)
(instance ?O Organization)
(subOrganization ?D ?O)))
A revised and expanded version of the SUMO-WordNet mappings might have as
the entry for synset #1
(exists (?D
?O)
(and
(instance ?O Organization)
(subOrganization ?D ?O)))
which would express a fragment of logic that would need to be included in a
translation to logic of the word sense used in context.
One might map to Organization instead of the relation subOrganization
though.
I hope this clarifies things somewhat.
Adam
At 10:54 AM 6/18/2003 -0700, Erik Larson wrote:
>Adam,
>
> From the SUMO browser for "Department" entered as an English word:
>
>A specialized sphere of knowledge; "baking is not my department"; "his
>work established a new department of literature".
>
>SUMO Equivalents: Proposition
>
>This can't be right. A proposition is abstract but a department has a
>chair, a physical address and so on.
>
>A department is really an instance of an organization, as the SUMO comment
>makes clear elsewhere, for Organization. Organizations are
>groups-objects-physical in SUMO (going up the hierarchy), this is good.
>
>Universities are organizations too, so SUMO's subOrganization predicate
>(or some specialization of it) can be used to relate departments to their
>universities. There's SUMO vocabulary for FieldOfStudy (a type of
>proposition), so all that's required is a binary predicate relating
>departments with their fields of study. If something like
>departmentFieldOfStudy is too specific, how about groupContentFocus (ouch)
>or something similar that relates a group of people to a particular set of
>propositions constituting the reason for the existence of the group?
>
>Erik
>
>
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