This document provides an overview of a tutorial on ontology engineering and lexical semantics. It discusses building an ontology to define legal persons in Palestine, including both natural persons and organizations. Students will work individually to develop an ontology classifying different types of legal entities according to Palestinian law, reusing previous ontologies. They will present their ontology for feedback and then submit a final version developed in both ORM and OWL with Arabic and English terms. The goal is to enable semantics for government web services and commit to a shared definition of "legal entity" under Palestinian regulations.

1. ‫أكاديمية الحكومة اإللكترونية الفلسطينية‬
The Palestinian eGovernment Academy
www.egovacademy.ps
Tutorial 4: Ontology Engineering & Lexical Semantics
Session 7
(Project: Legal Person Ontology)
Dr. Mustafa Jarrar
University of Birzeit
mjarrar@birzeit.edu
www.jarrar.info
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2. About
This tutorial is part of the PalGov project, funded by the TEMPUS IV program of the
Commission of the European Communities, grant agreement 511159-TEMPUS-1-
2010-1-PS-TEMPUS-JPHES. The project website: www.egovacademy.ps
Project Consortium:
Birzeit University, Palestine
University of Trento, Italy
(Coordinator )
Palestine Polytechnic University, Palestine Vrije Universiteit Brussel, Belgium
Palestine Technical University, Palestine
Université de Savoie, France
Ministry of Telecom and IT, Palestine
University of Namur, Belgium
Ministry of Interior, Palestine
TrueTrust, UK
Ministry of Local Government, Palestine
Coordinator:
Dr. Mustafa Jarrar
Birzeit University, P.O.Box 14- Birzeit, Palestine
Telfax:+972 2 2982935 mjarrar@birzeit.eduPalGov © 2011
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3. © Copyright Notes
Everyone is encouraged to use this material, or part of it, but should
properly cite the project (logo and website), and the author of that part.
No part of this tutorial may be reproduced or modified in any form or by
any means, without prior written permission from the project, who have
the full copyrights on the material.
Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike
CC-BY-NC-SA
This license lets others remix, tweak, and build upon your work non-
commercially, as long as they credit you and license their new creations
under the identical terms.
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4. Tutorial Map
Topic Time
Session 1_1: The Need for Sharing Semantics 1.5
Session 1_2: What is an ontology 1.5
Intended Learning Objectives
A: Knowledge and Understanding Session 2: Lab- Build a Population Ontology 3
4a1: Demonstrate knowledge of what is an ontology, Session 3: Lab- Build a BankCustomer Ontology 3
how it is built, and what it is used for.
Session 4: Lab- Build a BankCustomer Ontology 3
4a2: Demonstrate knowledge of ontology engineering
and evaluation. Session 5: Lab- Ontology Tools 3
4a3: Describe the difference between an ontology and a Session 6_1: Ontology Engineering Challenges 1.5
schema, and an ontology and a dictionary.
Session 6_2: Ontology Double Articulation 1.5
4a4: Explain the concept of language ontologies, lexical
semantics and multilingualism. Session 7: Lab - Build a Legal-Person Ontology 3
B: Intellectual Skills Session 8_1: Ontology Modeling Challenges 1.5
4b1: Develop quality ontologies.
Session 8_2: Stepwise Methodologies 1.5
4b2: Tackle ontology engineering challenges.
4b3: Develop multilingual ontologies. Session 9: Lab - Build a Legal-Person Ontology 3
4b4: Formulate quality glosses. Session 10: Zinnar – The Palestinian eGovernment 3
C: Professional and Practical Skills Interoperability Framework
4c1: Use ontology tools. Session 11: Lab- Using Zinnar in web services 3
4c2: (Re)use existing Language ontologies.
Session 12_1: Lexical Semantics and Multilingually 1.5
D: General and Transferable Skills
d1: Working with team. Session 12_2: WordNets 1.5
d2: Presenting and defending ideas. Session 13: ArabicOntology 3
d3: Use of creativity and innovation in problem solving.
Session 14: Lab-Using Linguistic Ontologies 3
d4: Develop communication skills and logical reasoning
abilities. Session 15: Lab-Using Linguistic Ontologies 3
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5. Practical Session (Legal-Person Ontology)
Description:
Palestine decided to launch most of the governmental services to the
public through the internet; but it was quickly realized that the
consumers of these services should be well-defined, not only by name
but also the necessary information about them. Legal entities can be
either a natural persons (e.g., citizens, foreigners, etc. ) or
organizations (e.g., companies, associations, etc.).
 Build an ontology to specify the meaning of a Legal Entity in
Palestine. The specification should classify these entities based on
their types, and the necessary information about each of them.
 That is, this ontology will not only be shared by all ministries (so to
enable semantics for the deployed web services), but it will commit
to the definition of “legal entity” in the Palestinian law and
regulations.
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6. Practical Session (Legal-Person Ontology)
Each student should work alone.
• A student may re-use his/here ontologies that were developed
earlier: the Population and BankCustomer ontologies.
• Students should look into the relevant Palestinian laws and
regulations, to understand the differences between the types of
legal entities .
• After finalizing the ontology, each student will be asked to present
his/her ontology to all students, so to collect comments and
feedback.
• Then each student will have sometime to correct mistakes, and
submit the final ontology.
• The ontology should be developed in ORM and well as in OWL, and
should include the Arabic and English terms for each concept.
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