Pal gov.tutorial4.session12 1.lexicalsemanitcs

1PalGov © 2011 1PalGov © 2011

أكاديمية الحكومة اإللكترونية الفلسطينيةThe Palestinian eGovernment Academy

www.egovacademy.ps

Tutorial 4: Ontology Engineering & Lexical Semantics

Session 12.1

Lexical Semantics and Multilingualism

Dr. Mustafa Jarrar

University of Birzeit

[email protected]

www.jarrar.info

mailto:[email protected]

http://www.jarrar.info/


About

This tutorial is part of the PalGov project, funded by the TEMPUS IV program of the

Commission of the European Communities, grant agreement 511159-TEMPUS-1-

2010-1-PS-TEMPUS-JPHES. The project website: www.egovacademy.ps

University of Trento, Italy

University of Namur, Belgium

Vrije Universiteit Brussel, Belgium

TrueTrust, UK

Birzeit University, Palestine

(Coordinator )

Palestine Polytechnic University, Palestine

Palestine Technical University, PalestineUniversité de Savoie, France

Ministry of Local Government, Palestine

Ministry of Telecom and IT, Palestine

Ministry of Interior, Palestine

Project Consortium:

Coordinator:

Dr. Mustafa Jarrar

Birzeit University, P.O.Box 14- Birzeit, Palestine

Telfax:+972 2 2982935 [email protected]

http://www.egovacademy.ps/


© Copyright Notes

Everyone is encouraged to use this material, or part of it, but should

properly cite the project (logo and website), and the author of that part.

No part of this tutorial may be reproduced or modified in any form or by

any means, without prior written permission from the project, who have

the full copyrights on the material.

Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike

CC-BY-NC-SA

This license lets others remix, tweak, and build upon your work non-

commercially, as long as they credit you and license their new creations

under the identical terms.


Outline and Session ILOs

This session will help students to:

4a4: Explain the concept of language ontologies, lexical

semantics and multilingualism.

4b3: Develop multilingual ontologies.

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Tutorial Map

Topic Time

Session 1_1: The Need for Sharing Semantics 1.5

Session 1_2: What is an ontology 1.5

Session 2: Lab- Build a Population Ontology 3

Session 3: Lab- Build a BankCustomer Ontology 3

Session 4: Lab- Build a BankCustomer Ontology 3

Session 5: Lab- Ontology Tools 3

Session 6_1: Ontology Engineering Challenges 1.5

Session 6_2: Ontology Double Articulation 1.5

Session 7: Lab - Build a Legal-Person Ontology 3

Session 8_1: Ontology Modeling Challenges 1.5

Session 8_2: Stepwise Methodologies 1.5

Session 9: Lab - Build a Legal-Person Ontology 3

Session 10: Zinnar – The Palestinian eGovernmentInteroperability Framework

3

Session 11: Lab- Using Zinnar in web services 3

Session 12_1: Lexical Semantics and Multilingually 1.5

Session 12_2: WordNets 1.5

Session 13: ArabicOntology 3

Session 14: Lab-Using Linguistic Ontologies 3

Session 15: Lab-Using Linguistic Ontologies 3

Intended Learning ObjectivesA: Knowledge and Understanding

4a1: Demonstrate knowledge of what is an ontology,

how it is built, and what it is used for.

4a2: Demonstrate knowledge of ontology engineering

and evaluation.

4a3: Describe the difference between an ontology and a

schema, and an ontology and a dictionary.

4a4: Explain the concept of language ontologies, lexical

semantics and multilingualism.

B: Intellectual Skills

4b1: Develop quality ontologies.

4b2: Tackle ontology engineering challenges.

4b3: Develop multilingual ontologies.

4b4: Formulate quality glosses.

C: Professional and Practical Skills

4c1: Use ontology tools.

4c2: (Re)use existing Language ontologies.

D: General and Transferable Skills

d1: Working with team.

d2: Presenting and defending ideas.

d3: Use of creativity and innovation in problem solving.

d4: Develop communication skills and logical reasoning

abilities.


Session Outline

• Linguistic Ontologies vs. Application Ontologies

• Lexical Semantics

• The Semantic Triangle

• Polysemy and Synonymy

• Multilingually


Linguistic Ontology vs. Application ontology

• The importance of linguistic ontologies is growing rapidly.

• An application ontology is to represent the semantics of a certain

domain/application. Such as, the FOAF ontology, the Palestinian e-

government ontology, the CContology, etc.

Each word convey one concept (no polysemy).

Represents application’s knowledge and data structure.

Used only by a certain application, or a class of applications.

• A linguistic ontology is to represent the semantics of all words of a

human language, independently of a particular application. Such as

WordNet for English.

Each word may convey several concepts (Polysemy).

Represents common-sense knowledge (lexical semantics).

Can be used for general purposes.

Let’s first understand the relations between a word and its meaning(s).


Outline





• Multilingually


What is Lexical Semantics?

The study of how and what the words of a language denote.

• Whether the meaning of a lexical unit is established by looking at its

neighborhood in the semantic net (by looking at the other words it

occurs with in natural sentences), or if the meaning is already locally

contained in the lexical unit?

• There are several theories of the classification and decomposition of

word meaning, the differences and similarities in lexical semantic

structure between different languages, and the relationship of word

meaning to sentence meaning and syntax.

• Lexical Semantics focuses on the mapping of words to concepts.

Lexical item: a single word or chain of words that forms the basic elements of a

language's lexicon (vocabulary). E.g., "cat", "traffic light", "take care of", "by-the-way“, etc.

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What is Lexical Semantics?

• There are different theories and approaches in defining the relation

between a lexical unit and its meaning. For example: can we

understand the meaning independently of a sentence? can we

understand the meaning independently of the grammar (morphology)?

and so on.

• Such theories and approaches are: Prestructuralist semantics,

structural semantics and none structural semantics, interpretative

semantics and generative semantics, cognitive semantics.

• In this lecture, we don’t investigate these theories, but rather, we

study the “meaning” from a computational and engineering viewpoints,

so to enable computer applications.

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Outline





• Multilingually

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The Semantic Triangle

Symbol Thingstands for

• Humans require words (or at least symbols) to communicate

efficiently. The mapping of words to things is indirect. We do it by

creating concepts that refer to things.

• The relation between symbols and things has been described in the

form of the meaning triangle (by Gomperz 1908) :

Concept

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Concept


Symbol Thing“Table” stands for

A set of data arranged in rows and columns

A piece of furniture having a smooth flat top that is

usually supported by one or more vertical legs

• Humans require words (or at least symbols) to communicate

efficiently. The mapping of words to things is indirect. We do it by

creating concepts that refer to things.

• The relation between symbols and things has been described in the

form of the meaning triangle (by Gomperz 1908) :

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Concept




• Meaning/معنى = Concept/مفهوم = Semantics

• The meaning/semantics of a term is its concepts.



Concept: a set of rules we

have in mind to distinguish

similar things in reality[J05].

An instance of a concept (الماصدق)

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Concept




• A concept might not be agreed among all people (i.e., not exactly the

same set of rules/properties are agreed by all people).

• Thus, “most common properties” are used within:

a community of practice (e.g., professions, or language communities).

Large community & less interactions less concepts are shared.



An instance of a concept (الماصدق)Concept: a set of rules we



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Concept

Polysemy



• Polysemy: is the capacity of a lexical unit to refer to multiple

meanings/concepts. These meanings can be related or different.

• Polysemy is the consequence of meaning evolution. The constant

discussion over how to name and what words mean is in the discourse of

a community and implies language evolution. [Temmerman]

• Note: the most frequent word forms are the most polysemous! [Fellbaum]



An instance of a concept (الماصدق)Concept: a set of rules we



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Concept

Synonymy

Symbol Thingstands for


• Synonymy: Different lexical units denoting the same concept

• Two lexical units are said to be synonyms if they can be used

interchangeably in a certain context.

• many synonyms evolved from the parallel use.

• Some lexicographers claim that no synonyms have exactly the same

meaning (in all contexts or social levels of language).



{Table, Tabular Array}

Table

{Table, Mesa}

Flat tableland with steep edges

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Concept

Multilingually





”طاولة“”جدول“

• Concepts are not totally language-dependent, as they typically depend

on the culture of the language-speakers.

• Many concepts are shared cross languages, especially if the speakers

of these languages interact with each other.

• The more interaction between two communities speaking different

languages, the more shared concepts can be found.

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• Concepts are not totally language-dependent, as they typically depend

on the culture of the language-speakers.

• Many concepts are shared cross languages, especially if the speakers

of these languages interact with each other.

• The more interaction between two communities speaking different

languages, the more shared concepts can be found.

Concept

Multilingually






French

EnglishArabic

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Concept

Multilingually






It would nice to know how many concepts are shared between English

and French, and Arabic and French/English.

This would reflect how much the communities speaking these languages

interacted in the current and past centuries.

French

EnglishArabic

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References

Roche Christophe, Calberg-Challot Marie (2010): “Synonymy in Terminology: the Contribution of

Ontoterminology”, Re-thinking synonymy: semantic sameness and similarity in languages and their description,

Helsinki, 2010http://www.linguistics.fi/synonymy/Synonymy%20Ontoterminology%20Helsinki%202010.pdf

Roche Christophe, Calberg-Challot Marie, Damas Luc, Rouard Philippe (2009): “Ontoterminology: A new

paradigm for terminology”. KEOD, Madeirahttp://ontology.univ-savoie.fr/condillac/files/docs/articles/Ontoterminology-a-new-paradigm-for-terminology.pdf

George A. Miller, Richard Beckwith, Christiane Fellbaum, Derek Gross, and Katherine Miller: Introduction to WordNet: An On-

line Lexical Database. International Journal of Lexicography, Vol. 3, Nr. 4. Pages 235-244. (1990)

http://wordnetcode.princeton.edu/5papers.pdf

http://www.linguistics.fi/synonymy/Synonymy Ontoterminology Helsinki 2010.pdf







http://ontology.univ-savoie.fr/condillac/files/docs/articles/Ontoterminology-a-new-paradigm-for-terminology.pdf
















Pal gov.tutorial4.session12 1.lexicalsemanitcs

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