The document discusses the ISOCAT and RELCAT registries, emphasizing their role in mapping data categories and concepts for explicit semantics in linguistic resources. It outlines issues related to theoretical frameworks, granularity, and relationships between various data categories, illustrated through case studies and examples. Conclusions include the need for user support and integration of ISOCAT and RELCAT for improved semantic clarity.

1. www.isocat.org
ISOcat and RELcat:
2 cooperating Semantic Registries
Menzo Windhouwer
menzo.windhouwer@dans.knaw.nl
The Language Archive – DANS
Ineke Schuurman
ineke@ccl.kuleuven.be
KU Leuven, CLARIN-NL – Utrecht University
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2. www.isocat.org
Outline
• The need for explicit semantics
– ISOcat
• Mapping issues
– Languages, theoretical frameworks
– Granularity levels
– RELcat
• CGN case study
• Conclusions and future work
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3. www.isocat.org
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 Menzo worked on, and now archived at DANS;
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also this not a TDN punchcard

4. www.isocat.org
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DOBES corpora
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5. www.isocat.org
ISOcat
• An open Data Category/Concept Registry where
everyone can
– find and select data categories/concepts
– create new data categories/concepts
– share data categories/concepts
• Each data category/concept has a Persistent
Identifier which can be embedded in a resource
(schema) to make the intended semantics (more)
explicit
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6. www.isocat.org
Mapping issues
• Interesting resources for a specific research
question might
– use very different theoretical frameworks, which
might share few/none data categories/concepts
– use more coarse or finer grained data
categories/concepts
• How to overcome these differences by
mapping data categories/concepts to each
other?
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7. www.isocat.org
Some examples
• definite article (PoS)
– EN: 1 (-)
– FR: 2 (masc, fem)
– NL: 2 (neuter, non-neuter)
– DE: 3 (masc, fem, neuter)
Dutch ‘non-neuter’ , for example, should be
related to ‘masc’ and ‘fem’
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8. www.isocat.org
Some examples
• Indirect object (syntax)
– EN: indirect object
– NL:
• meewerkend voorwerp (1), or
• meewerkend voorwerp (2) plus belanghebbend
voorwerp
– All translated as ‘indirect object’
=> 3 definitions of ‘indirect object’, relations are
to be shown !
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9. www.isocat.org
Some examples
• Event (semantics)
– ISO-TimeML: event and state, where ‘state’ is a
type of event
– Other theories (Kamp & Reyle etc): eventuality,
two subtypes: ‘event’ and ‘state’
Concepts ‘eventuality’, ‘event’ and ‘state’ are to
be related
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10. www.isocat.org
ISOcat internal issues
Data categories that are almost the same,
apart from type, profile, language, …
Currently we insert a new DC. But note that the
original one and the new one should be
marked as having a same-as relation
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11. www.isocat.org
RELcat
• A Relation Registry (under construction) to store
–
–
–
–
(almost) same-as relationships
subsumption relationships (isSuperClassOf, isSubClassOf)
mereology relationships (isPartOf, hasPart)
…
between data categories/concepts
• The focus is on informal and possibly partial
ontologies to be used for resource discovery
• Based on RDF triples
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12. www.isocat.org
CGN case study
• Atomic building blocks of CGN tags are
defined in ISOcat (still private)
• The EBNF schema of a CGN tag is stored in
SCHEMAcat
• The subsumption relations in the value
domains are stored in RELcat
• (almost) same-as relationships with other data
categories/concepts are also stored in RELcat
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13. www.isocat.org
CGN granularity mappings
• How to deal with (almost) same-as
relationships that involve more then one
atomic CGN data category/concept?
– Example: N(SOORT) = Common Noun
• Based on the CGN EBNF this involves the
following slots of the /CGN tag/
– /PoS/ = /N/
– /NTYPE/ = /SOORT/
• How to express this in RDF?
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14. www.isocat.org
RELcat RDF mapping
• Data categories/concepts can function as
subjects and objects in an RDF triple
• The predicate of an RDF triple is a RELcat
relationship type
• Alternative: complex data categories as
properties
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15. www.isocat.org
N(SOORT) = Common Noun
CGN tag
isA
sameAs
Common Noun
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16. www.isocat.org
N(SOORT) = Common Noun
CGN tag
isA
hasPart
hasPart
PoS
has more parts
NTYPE
has more
potential
values
has more
potential
values
sameAs
hasPotentialValue
N
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Common Noun
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hasPotentialValue
SOORT
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17. www.isocat.org
N(SOORT) = Common Noun
CGN tag
isA
hasPart
hasPart
PoS
has more
potential
values
hasPart
hasPart
isA
hasValue
hasPotentialValue
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NTYPE
has more
potential
values
isA
sameAs
isA
N
has more parts
hasValue
hasPotentialValue
isA
Common Noun
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SOORT
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18. www.isocat.org
N(SOORT) = Common Noun
CGN tag
isA
hasPart
hasPart
PoS
has more
potential
values
hasPart
hasPart
isA
hasValue
hasPotentialValue
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NTYPE
has more
potential
values
isA
sameAs
isA
N
has more parts
hasValue
hasPotentialValue
isA
Common Noun
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SOORT
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19. www.isocat.org
Cooperation between
ISOcat and RELcat
• ISOcat: value domains of closed data
categories
– RELcat: hasPotentialValue (new relationship type)
• ISOcat: is-a relations between simple data
categories
– RELcat: subsumption relations
• SCHEMAcat: part-of relationships
– RELcat: mereology relationships
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20. www.isocat.org
Conclusions and future work
• Simple mappings are easy
• Complex mapping get easily fairly complex
– UI support?
– DSL support?
– Alternative RDF mapping?
• User front-end for RELcat
– Integration of RELcat and ISOcat?
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21. www.isocat.org
Other examples
• “JJR” -> “POS=adjective & degree=comparative”
• “Transitive” -> “thetavp=vp120 & synvps=[synNP] &
caseAssigner=True”
• “VVIMP” -> “POS= verb & main verb & mood=imperative”
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