ONTACWGOntology and Taxonomy Coordinating Working Group

A working group of the Semantic Interoperability Community of Practice (SICoP)

To assist in the development and cross-referencing of Knowledge Classification Systems (Ontologies, taxonomies, thesauri, graphical knowledge representations) by:

(1) maintaining on-line resources where such efforts can share: data; utilities to help create such resources; and pilot programs to

demonstrate how to use such knowledge classifications for practical purposes

(2) To adopt and extend, as a community, a higher-level ontology that can serve as the “defining conceptual vocabulary” adequate to specify the meanings of the terms used within all of the participating communities, and relate the community terms to each other precisely.

The Long-Term Goal

Semantic Interoperability:The ability of computers to accurately communicate conceptual information; to correctly interpret the meanings of communicated information and make appropriate decisions

By adopting or building a common conceptual language for computers, which can be used to specify and relate the meanings of terms in any community terminology.

Concepts vs. WordsMathematical Theory / | \ / \ \ / | \ / \ | \ \ / | \ /

Axioms:(Every Cat has (( 4) Legs))

(Every House has ((atLeast 1) Door))

HouseCat

Siamese

Ontological Theory

Terminology

“Siamese Cat”

“Residential House”

“Haus”

“chat siamois”“Siamesische Katze”

“House”

“maison”

“Siamese feline”“Siamese”

“дом”

シャム猫

Will Any Upper Ontology Serve?

Lenat’s Dictum (Building Large Knowledge-Based Systems, 1990, p. 20):

• Do the top layers of the global ontology correctly

• Relate all the rest of human knowledge to those top layers

CONTROLLED ENGLISH• ClearTalk (Skuce, 1996)

http://www.csi.uottawa.ca/~kavanagh/Ikarus/Cleartalk.html

• Effective NL Paraphrasing of Ontologies on the Semantic Webhttp://www.mindswap.org/papers/nlpowl.pdf

• Sowa’s “Common Logic Controlled English”http://www.jfsowa.com/clce/specs.htm

• ESKIF (developmental)

Special KOS registry requirement

• In order to be reusable outside the originating community, a KOS should have information specifying whether the meanings of its terms depend on any other KOS, or are related to terms in any other KOS.

• In the event that an upper ontology is used to specify meanings in a KOS, that needs to be explicitly represented.

• If an ontology is intended to be independent and self-describing, that needs to be specified.

Going Forward

• Whatever other ontologies or KOSs one builds, try to integrate the top levels with a common ontology being maintained by the community.

• Work toward some common Controlled-English interface to the common ontology.