1. ‫أكاديمية الحكومة اإللكترونية الفلسطينية‬
The 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
mjarrar@birzeit.edu
www.jarrar.info
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2. 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
Project Consortium:
Birzeit University, Palestine
University of Trento, Italy
(Coordinator )
Palestine Polytechnic University, Palestine Vrije Universiteit Brussel, Belgium
Palestine Technical University, Palestine
Université de Savoie, France
Ministry of Telecom and IT, Palestine
University of Namur, Belgium
Ministry of Interior, Palestine
TrueTrust, UK
Ministry of Local Government, Palestine
Coordinator:
Dr. Mustafa Jarrar
Birzeit University, P.O.Box 14- Birzeit, Palestine
Telfax:+972 2 2982935 mjarrar@birzeit.eduPalGov © 2011
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3. © 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.
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4. 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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5. Tutorial Map
Topic Time
Session 1_1: The Need for Sharing Semantics 1.5
Session 1_2: What is an ontology 1.5
Intended Learning Objectives
A: Knowledge and Understanding Session 2: Lab- Build a Population Ontology 3
4a1: Demonstrate knowledge of what is an ontology, Session 3: Lab- Build a BankCustomer Ontology 3
how it is built, and what it is used for.
Session 4: Lab- Build a BankCustomer Ontology 3
4a2: Demonstrate knowledge of ontology engineering
and evaluation. Session 5: Lab- Ontology Tools 3
4a3: Describe the difference between an ontology and a Session 6_1: Ontology Engineering Challenges 1.5
schema, and an ontology and a dictionary.
Session 6_2: Ontology Double Articulation 1.5
4a4: Explain the concept of language ontologies, lexical
semantics and multilingualism. Session 7: Lab - Build a Legal-Person Ontology 3
B: Intellectual Skills Session 8_1: Ontology Modeling Challenges 1.5
4b1: Develop quality ontologies.
Session 8_2: Stepwise Methodologies 1.5
4b2: Tackle ontology engineering challenges.
4b3: Develop multilingual ontologies. Session 9: Lab - Build a Legal-Person Ontology 3
4b4: Formulate quality glosses. Session 10: Zinnar – The Palestinian eGovernment 3
C: Professional and Practical Skills Interoperability Framework
4c1: Use ontology tools. Session 11: Lab- Using Zinnar in web services 3
4c2: (Re)use existing Language ontologies.
Session 12_1: Lexical Semantics and Multilingually 1.5
D: General and Transferable Skills
d1: Working with team. Session 12_2: WordNets 1.5
d2: Presenting and defending ideas. Session 13: ArabicOntology 3
d3: Use of creativity and innovation in problem solving.
Session 14: Lab-Using Linguistic Ontologies 3
d4: Develop communication skills and logical reasoning
abilities. Session 15: Lab-Using Linguistic Ontologies 3
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6. Session Outline
• Linguistic Ontologies vs. Application Ontologies
• Lexical Semantics
• The Semantic Triangle
• Polysemy and Synonymy
• Multilingually
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7. 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).
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8. Outline
• Linguistic Ontologies vs. Application Ontologies
• Lexical Semantics
• The Semantic Triangle
• Polysemy and Synonymy
• Multilingually
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9. 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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10. 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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11. Outline
• Linguistic Ontologies vs. Application Ontologies
• Lexical Semantics
• The Semantic Triangle
• Polysemy and Synonymy
• Multilingually
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12. The Semantic Triangle
• 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
Symbol stands for Thing
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13. The Semantic Triangle
• 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) :
A piece of furniture having a smooth flat top that is
usually supported by one or more vertical legs
A set of data Concept rows and columns
arranged in
“Table” Symbol stands for Thing
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14. The Semantic Triangle
• Meaning/‫ = معنى‬Concept/‫ = مفهوم‬Semantics
• The meaning/semantics of a term is its concepts.
Concept: a set of rules we
An instance of a concept (‫)الماصدق‬
have in mind to distinguish
similar things in reality[J05]. piece of furniture having a smooth flat top that is
A
usually supported by one or more vertical legs
A set of data Concept rows and columns
arranged in
“Table” Symbol stands for Thing
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15. The Semantic Triangle
• 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.
Concept: a set of rules we
An instance of a concept (‫)الماصدق‬
have in mind to distinguish
similar things in reality[J05]. piece of furniture having a smooth flat top that is
A
usually supported by one or more vertical legs
A set of data Concept rows and columns
arranged in
“Table” Symbol stands for Thing
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16. Outline
• Linguistic Ontologies vs. Application Ontologies
• Lexical Semantics
• The Semantic Triangle
• Polysemy and Synonymy
• Multilingually
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17. 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]
Concept: a set of rules we
An instance of a concept (‫)الماصدق‬
have in mind to distinguish
similar things in reality[J05]. piece of furniture having a smooth flat top that is
A
usually supported by one or more vertical legs
A set of data Concept rows and columns
arranged in
“Table” Symbol stands for Thing
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18. Synonymy
• 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).
Flat tableland with steep edges
A piece of furniture having a smooth flat top that is
usually supported by one or more vertical legs
{Table, Mesa}
A set of data Concept rows and columns
arranged in
Table
{Table, Tabular Array} Symbol Thing
stands for
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19. Outline
• Linguistic Ontologies vs. Application Ontologies
• Lexical Semantics
• The Semantic Triangle
• Polysemy and Synonymy
• Multilingually
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20. Multilingually
• 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.
A piece of furniture having a smooth flat top that is
usually supported by one or more vertical legs
A set of data Concept rows and columns
arranged in
“‫”جدول“ ”طاولة‬
“Table” Symbol stands for Thing
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21. Multilingually
• 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.
Arabic English
A piece of furniture having a smooth flat top that is
usually supported by one or more vertical legs
A set of data Concept rows and columns
arranged in
“‫”جدول“ ”طاولة‬
“Table” Symbol Thing
French
stands for
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22. 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.
Arabic English
A piece of furniture having a smooth flat top that is
usually supported by one or more vertical legs
A set of data Concept rows and columns
arranged in
“‫”جدول“ ”طاولة‬
“Table” Symbol Thing
French
stands for
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23. 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, 2010
http://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, Madeira
http://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
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