Some Ontological Principles for Designing Upper Level Lexical Resources

TL;DR

This paper examines semantic issues in linguistic ontologies used in information systems, proposing principles to improve the clarity and organization of upper-level lexical categories, especially addressing the problem of ISA overloading.

Contribution

It introduces ontological principles for designing clearer upper-level lexical resources, focusing on resolving ISA overloading and refining category distinctions.

Findings

Analysis of ontological nature of upper categories

Proposal of principles to reduce ISA overloading

Suggestions for splitting or excluding categories

Abstract

The purpose of this paper is to explore some semantic problems related to the use of linguistic ontologies in information systems, and to suggest some organizing principles aimed to solve such problems. The taxonomic structure of current ontologies is unfortunately quite complicated and hard to understand, especially for what concerns the upper levels. I will focus here on the problem of ISA overloading, which I believe is the main responsible of these difficulties. To this purpose, I will carefully analyze the ontological nature of the categories used in current upper-level structures, considering the necessity of splitting them according to more subtle distinctions or the opportunity of excluding them because of their limited organizational role.