RE: SUO: Multi-Source Ontology (MSO) Draft Ballot Question
Phillipe, I notice that your paper at the site you reference
below is titled "Correction and Extension of WordNet 1.7".
Did your corrections and extensions make it into the latest
version - WordNet 2.0, or are they still being considered
by the Princeton crew?
What is the most correct and extended WordNet now available,
or is yours the best at this point?
Thanks,
Rich
Philippe Martin wrote:
>
> > WordNet synsets are language constructs, not concepts, and
> the links among
> > synsets are correct linguisticaly, but not philosophically.
>
> A synset represents "one of the meanings of the words in the
> set". Thus,
> it does represent a concept. WordNet has 2 kinds of links:
> lexical links
> between words (e.g. "antonym") and semantic links between
> synsets (e.g.
> "hypernym"). To re-use WordNet for knowledge representation,
> you have to
> give a logical interpretation to each kind of semantic links and thus
> assume that most hypernym links are genuine "generalization" links
> (i.e. subtypeOf links or instanceOf links), possibly distinguish
> between subtypeOf and instanceOf links (which I did), and correct
> the links that you find incorrect from a logical and semantic
> viewpoint.
>
> This is stressed by the first sentence of my article about my
> integration
> of WordNet (http://www.webkb.org/doc/papers/iccs03/):
> This article presents the transformation of the noun-related
> part of WordNet
> into a genuine "lexical ontology" to support knowledge
> representation,
> sharing and retrieval within a knowledge base or on the Web, i.e.
> to support "knowledge creation and communication".
>
> Thus, I gave category identifiers (as concise and clear as
> possible) to the
> synsets (and that alone is important; many teams, including
> the DOLCE team,
> had to generate identifiers for WordNet categories).
> For what I call the content-oriented links of WordNet (e.g.
> substance and
> meronym), I assumed the following interpretation:
> when such a link L (say the meronym, which I interpret as
> pm#spatial_part)
> connects a source category S to a destination category D, it
> means that
> "S (or 'a S' if S is a type) may have for L D (or 'a D' if D
> is a type)";
> "may have" corresponds to the relation cardinality [0..*];
> for example
> in FT: "wn#bird p #wing" means that "a wn#bird may have for
> pm#spatial_part
> a wn#wing", i.e. also in FT: pm#spatial_part(wn#bird
> [0..*],wn#wing [0..*]);
> Of course, this interpretation may be incorrect or imprecise
> (here, I'd
> have prefered: pm#spatial_part(pm#healthy_bird [1],wn#wing
> [2]);). Then,
> when incorrect links are found, they should be corrected.
>
> I am not sure that these are the "upper level commitments"
> that John Bateman
> was asking for. However, when I subtype a well-defined
> category (say, from
> DOLCE or SUMO) by another category (say from WordNet) the
> associated axioms
> are inherited, hence you have more precisions about what the
> specialized
> category means. On the other hand, this does impose some
> added semantics to
> the fuzzy semantics of WordNet categories (something which
> may be regrettable
> but is necessary for re-using them for knowledge
> representation purposes).
> Unless (or until) there is a detected inconsistency (detected
> automatically
> or by people) between the inherited axioms, my position is to
> assume that
> things are fine (and for most inference engines, they will
> certainly be).
>
> Now, as John Sowa and my article hinted, I'd be pleased to
> have a more
> structured source for a (much needed for my goals) "large
> lexical ontology"
> than WordNet. But WordNet (and, a fortiori, my re-use of
> WordNet) is an
> ontology (plus a thesaurus), not just a lexicon.
>
>
>
> > But it also now gives at least 3 restructured top-levels
> for WordNet:
> > * EuroWordNet * Ontocleaned * MSO ...
> > And, my question to all, has anyone yet done a detailed
> comparison of
> > these alternatives?
>
> My article also discusses about the connections between DOLCE
> (Ontoclean's
> top-level ontology) and WordNet.
> I have looked at EuroWordNet but had not the time to do
> anything about it.
>
>
>
> > As an example, take the inference path that is possible
> from the SUMO
> > term Motion to the WordNet synset "motion, movement, move"
> then up the
> > hypernym links to "change", "action" and then "act, human
> action, human
> > activity". Through that faulty inference chain, one could
> conclude that
> > any Motion is an intentional human action, which of course is false.
>
> There is indeed a faulty link somewhere but WordNet is not
> necessarily to
> blame: since the WordNet motion category you refer to (which
> is refered to
> by #human_motion (or wn#human_motion) in the MSO of WebKB-2
> and which has
> for gloss "the act of changing your location ...") is a subtype of
> wn#human_action, it can be argued that it does refer to a
> human movement
> (even if such a name does not appear in the synset) and hence
> sumo#motion
> should not have been set as a subtype of #movement but
> another category
> should have been chosen, e.g. #movement (which is the choice
> I made when
> integrating the NSM).
> Here are extracts of the FT descriptions of #movement and
> #human_motion
> (checkable via http://www.webkb.org/interface/categSearch.html).
> Please note that I (pm) have set a subtype link between them.
>
> #movement__motion (^a natural event that involves a change in
> the position
> or location of something^)
> > #approach.movement #passing.movement #deflection.movement ...
> #motion #movement.change (pm) #human_motion (pm),
> = nsm#move (pm),
> < #happening__occurrence__natural_event;
>
> #human_motion__motion__movement__move (^the act of changing your ...)
> > #approach #forward_motion #locomotion #lunge #travel ...,
> < #change #movement;
>
> The "SUMO Search tool" at
> http://ontology.teknowledge.com/cgi-bin/SUMO-browser-verbs.pl?
> term=motion&POS=1
> gives 5 WordNet "equivalents" to sumo#motion (&%Motion), in fact all
> the WordNet synsets that include the word "motion": these are indeed
> lexical links and not semantic links like those I propose.
> Furthermore, these lexical links are between SUMO and WordNet 1.6 so
> they will have to be checked and may be updated one day (the current
> version of WordNet is WordNet 2.0).
>
>
> > If the MSO lacks information from the ontologies it uses as sources,
> > and adds no new information
>
> As noted in my previous e-mail, you loose nothing if not all the
> definitions of the ontological primitives are included (since you can
> retrieve them anyway), and the MSO does add a lot, e.g. my top-level
> and my taxonomy of primitive relation types which are vital
> for my work
> (natural language representation) whereas, for that goal, I have no
> direct use for the SUMO.
>
>
> Philippe