Defining Vocabularies, Ontological and Linguistic: A Tool for Ontologizing Ontolog -- by Dr. Patrick Cassidy (MITRE) - 13-Jul-2006

* Subject Dr. Patrick Cassidy from MITRE was the Ontolog Forum invited speaker for our Thursday, July 13, 2006 session. He presented a talk on: "Defining Vocabularies, Ontological and Linguistic: A Tool for Ontologizing Ontolog" explaining the position of the formal upper ontology and its role in semantic interoperability, and proposes the use of a controlled "Linguistic Defining Vocabulary" that the community may find useful immediately in the task of ontologizing the Ontolog, or similar bodies of knowledge. * Date Thursday, July 13, 2006 * ONTOLOG Forum session page (with agenda and link to slides) http://ontolog.cim3.net/cgi-bin/wiki.pl?ConferenceCall_2006_07_13 * Abstract (by Pat Cassidy) For over ten years, study groups have been exploring the potential for broad agreement on a common upper ontology as a tool for semantic interoperability. The vision of how the upper ontology will enable semantic interoperability is usually stated in terms of unifying the semantics of multiple databases, or mapping multiple domain ontologies through a common upper ontology or interlingua. This talk will describe how utility of the upper ontology for semantic integration goes beyond these scenarios, and will propose the use of an upper ontology in a way that may immediately affect the task of ontologizing the Ontolog, or similar bodies of knowledge. What I will propose in this talk is that the development of the Common Semantic Model (COSMO), an upper ontology being developed within the Ontology and Taxonomy Coordinating Working Group (ONTACWG), should be pursued in parallel with development of a natural-language interface integrating the COSMO with an English defining vocabulary. A starting version of the English defining vocabulary is available as the Longmans' defining vocabulary, used in the LDOCE dictionary. The COSMO should then be developed so as to support creation of the logical specifications corresponding to any term definitions created using the English defining vocabulary.