=Paper=
{{Paper
|id=None
|storemode=property
|title=A model of characteristics’ formalization using Protégé-0WL
|pdfUrl=https://ceur-ws.org/Vol-578/paper16.pdf
|volume=Vol-578
|dblpUrl=https://dblp.org/rec/conf/tia/EstellesA09
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==A model of characteristics’ formalization using Protégé-0WL==
https://ceur-ws.org/Vol-578/paper16.pdf
A model for formalizing characteristics in
Protégé-OWL
Anna Estellés y Amparo Alcina1
1
Tecnolettra Team, Universidad Jaume I,
{estelles, alcina}@trad.uji.es
Abstract: This paper proposes a model for formalizing concept characteristics
in a manner consistent with the Terminology theoretical framework. We will
focus on the identification of the elements that take part in characteristic
formalization and their role, as well as on the double nature of characteristic.
Finally, we provide a preliminary outline of characteristics description
formalization using an ontology editor called Protégé-OWL. This article shows
the preliminary work of a broader project that deals with the representation of
characteristics and its terminological information using Protégé-OWL. It is
addressed to terminology researchers and developers that may use ontologies in
order to represent specific domain conceptual systems.
Keywords: Characteristic, concept, formalization, Terminology, Ontology.
1 Introduction
In Terminology, concepts can be classified in four categories or
groups: entities, activities, relations and characteristics (Sager y
Kageura, 1994:192). Our goal is to describe characteristics by means of
a formal language used to build ontologies (OWL-DL) and an editing
tool called Protégé-OWL. The context of this work are Txtceram and
ONTODIC 1 projects, so we base our research in examples of tile
characteristics. In order to describe a characteristic it is necessary to
explore its nature, the categories into which it can be grouped, the
domain of expertise in which the characteristic is used, its relevance for
various concepts descriptions, and how it relates to other concepts.
The use of ontologies in applied terminology has become an
alternative to traditional terminological databases. This has lead to the
emergence of various studies within the discipline of Terminology
(Gruber, 1993; Gamper, Nejdl et al., 1999; Temmerman & Koen,
2003). When using ontologies as a resource for representing concept
1 «TXTCeram: Semi-automatic extraction and analysis of ceramics terms using Electronic corpora» and
«ONTODIC: Methodology and tecnologies for creationg onomasiological dictionaries ontology based». Project director:
Amparo Alcina. http://tecnolettra.uji.es
Formalizing characteristics in Protégé-OWL
systems from a terminological point of view, for instance, for creating
an onomasiological dictionary, ontology seeks the representation of all
the concepts in a domain and not only entities (Alcina, 2008:34).
Next section focuses on the elements that contribute to the
description of a characteristic from a terminological point of view.
Finally, we outline the possibilities of formalizing these elements using
Protégé-OWL.
2 Characteristic definition
In the normative document UNE EN 1066 (UNE:1066, 1991:3)
characteristic are defined as: «Characteristics serve as a basis for
classifying concepts. They are necessary for differentiating one concept
from another in a specific area and also for other functions». A similar
definition could be: «an element of a concept denoting a property of an
entity or a class of entities» (Madsen, 1998:342).
This definition answers the question ‘What is a characteristic for?’
but it does not provide satisfactory answers to the question ‘What is a
characteristic?’. Nuoponnen’s definition of characteristic answers this
question stating that a characteristic is «a concept, the referent of which
is a property of an entity» (Nuopponen, 1994:61).
Above definitions show that on the one hand, for a concept system, a
characteristic is a property of a concept, one of the most important
features for the description of a concept. On the other, characteristics
are an independent concept.
In the field of ontology and knowledge engineering (Masolo &
Borgo, 2005), a quality is an entity that is inherent in another entity.
The weight of a book is an example. The value of a quality is named a
quale, the ‘actual' weight of a particular shaft is the quale. A quale is
considered an abstract entity that is part of a quality region, where other
quales compose the quality space. An example of color quality space
would be all the quales of colour (blue, red...).
Meyer (Meyer et al., 1997:100) and Kageura (Kageura, 2002:76),
among others, explore this approach.
Based on this and other bibliography of Terminology, we
distinguished between the different elements that make up a
characteristic description, and their roles in the description. First, we
delimited the two components of a characteristic: category
(characteristic label) and value. Then, we took into account that a
characteristic can be grouped using classes. This led us to the domain
of a characteristic, the concept or concepts that can be described by a
characteristic; thereafter we focused on the subject, the context in
which a characteristic is used in discourse.
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Formalizing characteristics in Protégé-OWL
Characteristic label: is the category that serves to group and
identify the values which may be attributed to the characteristic. It is
also used as an abstract concept when it is not followed in the discourse
by a value, where the label is supposed to be understood as the concept
representing all the possible values of a characteristic. An example of
characteristic label is ‘colour’.
Characteristic value: is a specific entity that designates an aspect of
a concept. We distinguish among the ones that are expressed lexically
and the rest. RED or CHINESE RED are examples of lexical characteristic
values. In our analysis, we also found the following types of non-
lexical values: numbers (integers, float or percentage) + measurement
unit; symbols (such as GHA, GHB, GHC - values of 'chemical resistance’
in a tile) and Boolean (for instance, YES or NO for ‘frost resistance’).
Classes and subclasses of characteristic labels and values will be
grouped according to their commonalities. These commonalities are
independent of the concept they describe, for example, ‘size’ and
‘height’ are characteristics used when measuring things, and they could
be part of a class called ‘measurement’. An example of classification of
values is shown in Kageura’s work (Kageura, 2002:77).
Domain: An important relation exists between a characteristic and
the concept or concepts it describes. We already mentioned the
example of the characteristic ‘frost resistance’ which has a relationship
with ‘tile’. Domain is the concept or group of concepts described by a
characteristic. Notice that a characteristic can apply to more than one
domain, even in the same context and that if a characteristic applies to a
domain, concepts within this domain can also be described by that
characteristic.
Area: refers to the area of specialization of a characteristic. When
building a terminological database, terminographers normally enter a
field that refers to the specialized area of the terms they work on. This
provides explicit information, and enables future merging.
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Formalizing characteristics in Protégé-OWL
3 Outline of formalization and representation of a
characteristic 2 in Protégé-OWL
Protégé OWL is an editing tool based on OWL (ontology web
language). In OWL there are different elements: owl:individual is used
to represent domain objects, owl:class represents a group of individuals
or a concept and rdf:property is used for expressing types of
relationships between instances or classes. The rdf:property element is
linked to: a domain, rdfs:domain (concept or concepts described by the
property) and a range, rdfs:range (value or values of the property).
Fuhermore, there is the owl:ObjectProperty element that links an
individual or class to an individual or class. The owl:DatatypeProperty
element links an individual or class to an XML Schema Datatype value
(numer, boolean value, symbol). Finally, using owl:annotationProperty
we can add information to classes, individuals or properties though this
information can not be processed by a reasoner (Sanz & Jiménez-Ruiz,
2009).
3.1 A characteristic in Protégé-OWL
For our project, first we have represented the characteristic label by
means of OWL class or an individual. These classes or individuals are
to be part of the taxonomy of characteristic labels or categories.
The area is formalized using an annotation property. Furthermore,
we have formalized a characteristic as a descriptive element by using
OWL properties. Once they have been formalized, properties are
located in individuals or class descriptions.
If characteristic values are represented in a lexical form, we
represented them first making use of classes and subclasses in the
characteristic taxonomy. Then, we linked the value or values to the
object of description by using an object property (fig. 1).
If characteristic values are not a lexical form, we used datatype
properties. For example, 'glaze' is a characteristic with Boolean values,
then the datatype property ‘has_glaze’ has a domain 'tile' with a
Boolean range, Protégé default Boolean values are TRUE or FALSE.
Notice that in OWL there can not be more than one class or property
with the same name, when needed we recommend to use prefixes and
suffixes such as ‘colour_value’, ‘has_colour’ and ‘colour_prop_of'.
2 In order to avoid reader’s confusion on the different approaches to the concept ‘property’, we will use
characteristic when referring to a 'property' from a terminological point of view (Nuopponen, 1994:61), property when
referring to OWL properties (Horridge, 2009:23) and feature when referring to a functional element.
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Formalizing characteristics in Protégé-OWL
Fig. 1 - Example of characteristic formalization as an element for describing concepts
To describe that a 'characteristic label’ represents the same concept
as a property, and describes a specific concept or concepts, we used a
new object property. This is done using OWL syntax. For example,
‘glaze_prop_of’ is a property whose domain is ‘glaze’ and range is
“has_glaze value TRUE” (fig.3). By applying a reasoner such as Fact++
we infer that a range of this property whose domain is the characteristic
label 'glaze' (class) is the entity concept 'glazed_tile' (class).
Fig. 2 - Example of property establishing a link between the characteristic class and
the concept described
4 Conclusions and future work
In this paper, we have set boundaries on the elements involved in the
description of a characteristic and their roles. We are currently working
on the formalization of tile characteristics following this description
and testing the representation of characteristic labels by means of
instances. Since some lacks have been detected regarding the
‘translation’ of characteristic in Terminology using knowledge
representation concepts, future work is motivated by a further research
in this area. Furthermore, characteristics have a number of properties
related to their role in concepts description, for example characteristic
can be essential, complementary (Cabré, 1992:184) or distinctive
(ISO:704, 2000:5), as well as extrinsic or intrinsic (Cabré, 1992:185).
Formalization of those properties and other semantic relations forms
part of a future work we are developing nowadays. Further results will
be presented in the form of a PhD Thesis.
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Formalizing characteristics in Protégé-OWL
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