24.1140, Diss: Comp Ling/Lexicography/Semantics/Text/Corpus Ling: Sepp älä: 'Contraintes sur la sélection des info =?UTF-8?Q?rmations_dans_les_d=C3=A9finitions_?=terminographiques...'

Wed Mar 6 23:57:55 UTC 2013

LINGUIST List: Vol-24-1140. Wed Mar 06 2013. ISSN: 1069 - 4875.

Subject: 24.1140, Diss: Comp Ling/Lexicography/Semantics/Text/Corpus Ling: Seppälä: 'Contraintes sur la sélection des informations dans les définitions terminographiques...'

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Date: Wed, 06 Mar 2013 18:57:08
From: Selja Seppälä [selja.seppala.unige at gmail.com]
Subject: Contraintes sur la sélection des informations dans les définitions terminographiques : vers des modèles relationnels génériques pertinents

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Institution: University of Geneva 
Program: Département de Traitement Informatique Multilingue 
Dissertation Status: Completed 
Degree Date: 2012 

Author: Selja Seppälä

Dissertation Title: Contraintes sur la sélection des informations dans les
définitions terminographiques : vers des modèles
relationnels génériques pertinents 

Dissertation URL:  http://archive-ouverte.unige.ch/vital/access/manager/Repository/unige:21874

Linguistic Field(s): Computational Linguistics
                     Lexicography
                     Semantics
                     Text/Corpus Linguistics

Dissertation Director(s):
Bruno de Bessé

Dissertation Abstract:

Definitions are included in terminological resources to ensure that they 
fulfill the function of conveying information about the meaning and 
usage of terms in the domain; they facilitate and enhance 
communication. The activity of definition writing is still mostly realized 
manually. Terminologists would however greatly benefit from the 
assistance of (semi-)automatic definition writing tools. Such tools would 
not only accelerate the process of writing definitions but also enhance 
the consistency and thus the overall quality of the definitions produced.

The general objective of my work is thus to conceive and implement 
generic tools to assist in definition writing, whatever the terminographic 
context, the domain or the language. In my thesis, I explore more 
specifically the nature of dictionary definitions and of the activity of 
definition writing in terminology. The main research topic of my thesis 
relates to the selection of defining information.

Typically, terminologists construct definitions using information in texts 
written by domain experts. However, not all the pieces of information 
found in these texts can be considered as defining and, when they are, 
not all of them are considered relevant to be included in a definition. 
One of the most challenging tasks of definition writing is therefore the 
selection of defining information. Thus, the two main questions raised 
by definition writing and which ought to be addressed in order to 
conceive and implement generic definition writing tools are the 
following:

-What determines or influences information selection?
-What types of information are relevant to defining?

Considering the different factors that are acknowledged to constrain 
the selection of defining information, the one constraint that is, prima 
facie, the most independent from any domain and language is the level 
of reality. I therefore make the hypothesis that information selection is 
partly a function of the type of entity defined. If this hypothesis is 
verified, it is possible to propose defining models based on the 
properties and relations characterizing each type of entity.

To test this hypothesis, I propose to adopt the categories of an existing 
realist upper-level ontology, the Basic Formal Ontology (BFO), and 
their specifications. This ontology is aimed at representing the type of 
things that exist in the world, their properties and their relations to 
other types of entities. In BFO, entity types are organized according to 
philosophical distinctions and they are consistent with the scientific 
knowledge of the world. I propose to adapt these categories to creating 
relational models, and to use these models to describe the internal 
structure of existing definitions. The idea is that large-scale multi-
domain and multilingual corpus analyses can be used to test the 
hypothesis and, if verified, to implement these models in a (semi-
)automatic definition writing tool. 

A pilot experiment based on a corpus analysis of a sample of 240 
terminological definitions extracted from 15 domains yielded 
encouraging results, with almost 75 % of the relations expressed in the 
analyzed definitions pertaining to the models associated with each 
entity type. This empirical study shows, moreover, which relations in 
these generic models are most relevant in terminological definitions. 
These results tend to confirm the tested hypothesis. The theoretical 
considerations underlying this methodological proposition also 
contribute to the foundations of an integrated theory of definitions in 
terminology.

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