[Corpora-List] WordNet vs Ontology

[Christian-Emil Smith Ore]

Dear all,
Among computer scientist the most popular definition of  'ontology' is that of Gruber (1993) "an ontology is an explicit specification of a conceptualization". In CSc  the term 'ontology' seems to have become  almost synonymous to 'data model',  but more funding friendly. In Digital Humanities it is often used in the meaning 'thesaurus' or 'closed vocabulary'. In more philosophically oriented contexts when not used as the name of a philosophical sub discipline it is my impression that it is used to denote conceptual models with some purpose. 

In my view, an ontology is a conceptual _model_ of  something. If wordnet is an ontology what is it modeling,  language mechanisms, that is, a linguistic metamodel , the real world as described by the vocabulary of a natural language or the real world in it self (somewhat difficult).

Regards,
Chr-Emil

>-----Original Message-----
>From: corpora-bounces at uib.no [mailto:corpora-bounces at uib.no] On Behalf
>Of Michal Ptaszynski
>Sent: Thursday, August 07, 2014 10:17 PM
>To: Kiril Simov; corpora at uib.no; corpora-request at uib.no
>Subject: Re: [Corpora-List] WordNet vs Ontology
>
>Hi Kiril and others
>
>Just a small thought.
>
>
>	- Lexicon (example, Machine Readable Dictionaries) - Vocabulary
>with NL definitions
>	- Simple Taxonomy (example, Clasifications)
>	- Thesaurus (example, WordNet) Lexical relations
>	- Taxonomy plus related-terms (example, Relational Model) Light-
>weight ontologies - Unconstrained use of arbitrary relations
>	- Fully Axiomatized Theory (Heavy-weight ontologies)
>
>
>This definition makes me wonder - what is NOT an ontology? If even a simple
>lexicon is also an ontology, most of papers in NLP and CL describe research
>with the use of ontologies, even unintentionally.
>
>Best,
>--
>Michal Ptaszynski
>
>Dnia 6 sie 2014 o godz. 19:43 "Kiril Simov" <kivs at bultreebank.org> napisał(a):
>
>
>
>	Dear Liling,
>
>	The book on Wordnet is:
>
>	WordNet: An Electronic Lexical Database
>	edited by
>	Christiane Fellbaum
>	MIT Press, 1998
>
>	Thus, Wordnet is an electronic lexical database.
>
>	Nicola Guarino in his lecture at the First OntoLex Workshop 2000
>	defines precision of ontologies like:
>
>	- Lexicon (example, Machine Readable Dictionaries) - Vocabulary
>with NL definitions
>	- Simple Taxonomy (example, Clasifications)
>	- Thesaurus (example, WordNet) Lexical relations
>	- Taxonomy plus related-terms (example, Relational Model) Light-
>weight ontologies - Unconstrained use of arbitrary relations
>	- Fully Axiomatized Theory (Heavy-weight ontologies)
>
>	Thus, WordNet is a kind of ontology.
>
>	With best regards,
>
>	Kiril
>
>	From: liling tan <mailto:alvations at gmail.com>
>	Sent: Wednesday, August 06, 2014 12:57 PM
>	To: corpora at uib.no
>	Subject: [Corpora-List] WordNet vs Ontology
>
>	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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