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Collaboratively Defining
Widely Accepted Linguistic Data Categories
in the ISOcat Data Category Registry
Menzo Windhouwer
The Language Archive – DANS
tla.mpi.nl
menzo.windhouwer@dans.knaw.nl
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The Language Archive
• Founded in September 2011
• Supported by MPG, BBAW and KNAW (DANS)
• Grown out of the Technical Group at the MPI for
Psycholinguistics
• Since 1990ies: challenge of archiving digital data
• 2000 – 2016 VolkswagenFoundation DOBES
project on Endangered Languages
• Active in many European infrastructure projects:
CLARIN, EUDAT, DASISH, …
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Language Archiving Technology
• Full lifecycle support
– Core: resources
– Key: metadata
– ‘New’: CMDI, ISOcat, AV recognition,
…
• Archive size:
– 70 Tb of resources
– 22.000 hours AV recordings
– 75.000 sessions (metadata)
– 5 million annotated segments
– 50 lexica
• My focus: Knowledge Systems
– LEXUS, an online lexicon tool
– ISOcat and companions
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Typological Database Nijmegen
TOP NOTION tds:Noun GROUPS{
NOTION tdn:GrammaticalDistinctions
LABEL "Grammatical distinctions for nouns."
GROUPS {
NOTION tdn:AgentNouns
LABEL "Agent nouns."
DESCRIPTION "Nouns can function as the agent of a clause."
LINK TO CONCEPT agentRole
GROUPS {
NOTION tdn:v098_plusAffix
LABEL "Agent nouns formed by verb stem plus affix."
LINK TO CONCEPTS (agentRole, verbalMorphology, boundAffix)
DESCRIPTION
<p>Agent nouns are formed by a verb stem plus an affix, e.g. English <qv>walk-er</qv>.</p>
NOTE AUTHOR IS "TDS" TYPE IS "original TDN label" "AGENT NOUNS ARE VERB STEM PLUS AFFIX"
IS FIELD v098;
...
Notes: TDN is not in archived in TLA, but curated in TDS, a previous project I worked on, and now archived at DANS;
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also this not a TDN punchcard

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DOBES corpora
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Oxford English Dictionary
Source: http://www.oxford-royale.co.uk/news/2010/12/04/new-online-edition-of-oxford-english-dictionary.html
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Terminology Community of Practice
• Community started out on paper (A5 fiches),
just like OED
• 80’s - 90’s projects to standardize data
category, the ‘fields’ on the fiches/in the
files/database records, names
• ISO 12620:1999 Data Categories a companion
standard to ISO 12200 Machine-readable
terminology interchange format (MARTIF)
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ISO 12620:1999
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Towards a Data Category Registry
• Problems with ISO 12620:1999 a hardcoded list of data categories
– Not easily extensible
– Ordering heavily debated
– Outdated and limited in range at the moment of release
• Developments
– In the SALT project an interchange model (TBX) based on MARTIF/data
categories was created, which was widely adopted
– ISO 11179 Metadata Registries was released, which describes the
standardization of data element concepts for metadata
– ISO released Annex ST Standards as databases, which describes an ISO
procedure to standardize registry entries
– In the LIRICS project a pilot Data Category Registry, SYNTAX, was
created
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ISO 12620:2009
• Terminology and other content and language resources — Specification of
data categories and management of a Data Category Registry for language
resources
– A data model for data category specifications inspired by ISO 11179
– A procedure to standardize data category specification compliant with
Annex ST
– Each data category gets a unique Persistent Identifier (PID)
– The Max Planck Institute for Psycholinguistics is appointed as the
Registration Authority of the ISO/TC 37 DCR
• In use by a growing number of ISO TC 37 standards
– Lexical Markup Framework (LMF)
– Linguistic Annotation Framework (LAF)
– Morph-syntactic Annotation Framework (MAF)
– …
– could be more, e.g., Feature System Declarations (FSD)
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Example Data Category specification
• Data category: /Grammatical gender/
– Administrative part:
• Identifier: grammaticalGender
• PID: http://www.isocat.org/datcat/DC-1297
– Descriptive part:
• English definition: Category based on (depending on languages)
the natural distinction between sex and formal criteria.
• French definition: Catégorie fondée (selon la langue) sur la
distinction naturelle entre les sexes ou d'autres critères formels.
– Linguistic part:
• Morposyntax conceptual domain: /masculine/, /feminine/,
/neuter/
• French conceptual domain: /masculine/, /feminine/
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Standardization procedure
Decision Group
Submission Thematic Domain Data Category Registry Stewardship
group Group Board group
Evaluation Validation
rejected rejected
Publication
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Thematic Domain Groups
TDG 1: Metadata • TDGs are the owner and guardians
TDG 2: Morphosyntax of a coherent subset of the DCR
TDG 3: Semantic Content Representation • TDGs own one or more profiles
TDG 4: Syntax
TDG 6: Language Resource Ontology • Each TDG has a chair
TDG 7: Lexicography • A number of members assigned by
TDG 8: Language Codes SC P members
TDG 9: Terminology • A number of expert members
invited by the chair (up to 50%)
TDG 11: Multilingual Information Management
TDG 12: Lexical Resources
• TDGs are constituted at the
TDG 13: Lexical Semantics TC37/SC plenary
• New TDGs need to be proposed by
a SC
1. Translation
2. (Sign language)
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ISOcat - the ISO TC 37/DCR
• A (coherent) set of Data Categories, in our case for
linguistic resources
• A system to manage this set:
– Create and edit Data Categories
– Share Data Categories, e.g., resolve PID references
– Standardize Data Categories
• An API for tools to access the DCR
• Grass roots approach
– Anyone can access the DCR and use or
create the data categories (s)he needs
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Refering to ISOcat data categories
• PIDs of data categories can easily embedded in XML documents
<lmf:LexicalEntry>
<tei:f
name="partOfSpeech"
dcr:datcat="http://www.isocat.org/datcat/DC-1345"
fVal="commonNoun”
dcr:valueDatcat="http://www.isocat.org/datcat/DC-1256"/>
<lmf:Lemma type="Form">
<tei:f
name="writtenForm”
dcr:datcat="http://www.isocat.org/datcat/DC-1836"
fVal="clergyman"/>
</lmf:Lemma>
</lmf:LexicalEntry>
• Also embedding in other formats is possible, e.g., via comments
• Preferably annotate schemas, so a whole range of resources is annotated
in one go
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A glimpse of ISOcat
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Collaboration in ISOcat
• Registered user can contact eachother via
mediated email
– Ask the owner if a data category can be adapted a
little to your needs
• Registered users can start up a group and invite
other users to join
– Work together on a set of data categories
– Interact via a public and/or private forum
• A group can submit data categories for ISO
standardization
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Component MetaData Infrastructure
• CMDI is developed by CLARIN and on its way to
standardization by ISO TC 37
– Limitations existing metadata schemas: DC/OLAC,
IMDI, TEI header
• Inflexible: too many (IMDI) or too few (OLAC) metadata
elements
• Limited interoperability (both semantic and syntactic)
• Problematic (unfamiliar) terminology for some sub-
communities.
• Limited support for LT tool & services descriptions
– The idea is to address this by:
• Explicit defined schema & semantics
• User/project/community defined components
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CMDI architecture
ISOcat component metadata
metadata
registry & modeler
catalogue
editor
metadata
user
search & Relation
metadata metadata
semantic Registry
editor creator
mapping
Joint Local
metadata metadata
metadata repository repository
curator metadata
curator
OAI-PMH OAI-PMH
Service provider Data provider
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Athens Core
• Bootstrapped the Metadata data categories
selection in ISOcat
– Based on existing metadata standards, e.g., DC,
OLAC, IMDI, TEI
– Many translations in european languages
• Users add the data categories they need to
the Metadata profile and use them in CMDI
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CMDI architecture
ISOcat component metadata
metadata
registry & modeler
catalogue
editor
metadata
user
search & Relation
metadata metadata
semantic Registry
editor creator
mapping
Joint Local
metadata metadata
metadata repository repository
curator metadata
curator
OAI-PMH OAI-PMH
Service provider Data provider
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CMDI architecture
metadata ISOcat component metadata
catalogues registry & modeler
(VLO, MI) editor
metadata
user
search & Relation
metadata metadata
semantic Registry
editor creator
mapping
Joint Local
metadata metadata
metadata repository repository
curator metadata
curator
OAI-PMH OAI-PMH
Service provider Data provider
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CMDI (intermediate) results
• Diverse metadata profiles
– Center or projects create specific ones, but reuses components where
possible
• Shared and explicit semantics help to overcome
– Terminological differences
– Differences in structure
• Future
– Get more context sensitive
• e.g. documentation language vs. speaker language
– Crosswalks
• equivalent metadata data categories are easily introduced due to the open nature
of ISOcat
– User specific relationships
• e.g. theory specific differences can be more important to one user then another
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Metadata TDG
• Standardization efforts of the Metadata TDG stalled
– Large overlap with the work/people at the Athens-Core meetings
• Community level agreement is maybe enough
– Activity motivation should not depend on one person, the TDG chair, only
• The need for explicit and shared semantics is not clear enough yet … more evangelization
needed
– Unfamiliarity with the work
• Terminologists are more used to this kind of review work
• Online review vs. old ISO ‘paper’ process
– Members have little time, it is difficult to sync schedules
• TDG experts tend to be senior scientist
• Continuous process vs. sporadic bursts of activity
– Unpaid work
• Project funding vs. wide acceptance in the community
• However, a project might bootstrap a thematic domain
• The same problems hold for other TDGs
– Current tendency to tie data category (selection) standardization to a
new/revised standard, e.g., MAF and TBX
– Redesign of the standardization process is coming up
• ISO is not actively supporting Annex ST Standards as Databases anymore
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Community efforts
• LMF-related: UBY, RELISH/GOLD
• Sign Language
• CLARIN
– CMDI, Athens Core
– CLARIN-NL/VL
• Call 1 – 4 projects created CMDI and annotated
resources/schemas
• ISOcat content coordinator: Ineke Schuurman
– Tutorials, guidelines (do’s and don’ts) and feedback
• Better community support in ISOcat
– Views, e.g., CLARIN-NL/VL
– Recommended by, e.g., DC-4949
–…
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Conclusions and future work
• Communties can already create a coherent view on ISOcat
– the CMDI use case shows potential
– maybe funder support needed to bootstrap specific domains
• The standardized core will take (a long) time
– like all standardization work
• Next to metadata also content
– explicit semantics would be profitable even when not shared and/or used for
resource discovery
– resources created with tools that support ISOcat will create such resources
more easy
• Companion registries:
– relations between data categories (RELcat)
– annotated schemas for language resources (SCHEMAcat)
– interaction with the CLARIN vocabulary service (CLAVAS)
• Data categories vs. concepts
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Detour: ISOcat and LOD/Semantic Web
• Archives and infrastructures look at the resources as
they are, i.e., in general no conversions to triples
• However, ISOcat data categories can easily be used in
RDF resources
:partOfSpeech dcr:datcat <http://www.isocat.org/datcat/DC-396> ;
rdfs:label "part of speech"@en ;
rdfs:comment "A category assigned to a word based on its grammatical
and semantic properties."@en .
• The Relation Registry, which is a tripple store, will in
general support lightweight, semi-formal ontologies
M. Windhouwer, S.E. Wright. Linking to linguistic data categories in ISOcat. LDL 2012.
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Thank you for your attention!
Visit
www.isocat.org
Questions?
www.isocat.org/forum/
isocat@mpi.nl
Acknowledgements
Thanks to anyone at TLA, Sue Ellen Wright, Ineke Schuurman, Marc Kemps-Snijders, CLARIN-NL, CLARIN, ISO TC 37
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A whole litter of cats!
Linguistic resource (schema) Linguistic knowledge base
Data categories
Containers
Concepts
Relation
Schema Registry - SCHEMAcat
Data Category Registry - ISOcat Concept Registry Relation Registry - RELcat
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ISO 11179: concepts vs. data elements/categories
ISO 12620 Data Categories
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