[Corpora-List] WordNet vs Ontology

[Qasemizadeh, Behrang]

Dear liling,

As defined by Thomas Gruber, an ontology is an explicit specification of a conceptualization. This definition of an ontology is broad enough to consider wordnet an ontology.
>>From a perspective, wordnet is a conceptualization of a collection of lexical items with associated information such as part of speech. This conceptualization is specified, or organized, around  a number of synsets and can be specified using a formal language (see e.g. the RDF/OWL representation at  http://www.w3.org/TR/wordnet-rdf/). Thus, WordNet can be considered an ontology.  However, whether this is helpful/meaningful/practical/consistent/etc. is another question.

Best regards,

Behrang


-----Original Message-----
From: corpora-bounces at uib.no [mailto:corpora-bounces at uib.no] On Behalf Of Robert A. Amsler
Sent: 06 August 2014 16:11
To: liling tan
Cc: corpora at uib.no
Subject: Re: [Corpora-List] WordNet vs Ontology

No, WordNet is not an ontology. Wordnet is a tangled hierarchy. A taxonomy that allows multiple upward paths from a given node. Ontologies are the result of logic being enforced on nodes and relationships that may use natural language words as their names. One of their primary functions is to eliminate ambiguity by narrowing down the meanings of words to precisely what they want the words to mean. This allow enforcement of useful computational properties, such as predictable relationships and inheritance of relationships, well-defined relationships between concepts, etc.

The loss is that ontologies may no longer represent natural language although they "look" as though they do because they use natural language words as nodes. Using an ontology should come with a warning that once you start using the ontology you are committing to acceptance of its formal definitions of the meanings of the words in the ontology.

One could almost consider ontologies to be the equivalent of artificial languages.



> Dear corpora linguists,
>
> There is recently a discussion on stackoverflow about "wordnet vs 
> ontology". I would like your perspective on several issues about 
> wordnet and ontology:
>
> - Is wordnet an ontology? If it is not an ontology, what is it?
>
> - What is the definition of an ontology? Is anything
> (words/concept/entities) under a hierarchical structure some sort of 
> linguistic ontology?
>
> - Are linguistic onotology / information science ontology subjected to 
> only upper and domain ontology?
>
> - Any other comments about ontology and wordnet?
>
> Regards,
> liling
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