To appear in Proc. IJCAI-95 Workshop on Basic Ontological Issues in Knowledge Sharing, Aug. 19-21, 1995, Montreal. A Situated Ontology for Practical NLP

Kavi Mahesh and Sergei Nirenburg

Computing Research Laboratory
Box 30001, Dept. 3CRL
New Mexico State University
Las Cruces, NM 88003-8001 USA
mahesh@crl.nmsu.edu sergei@crl.nmsu.edu

Abstract:

A situated ontology is a world model used as a computational resource for solving a particular set of problems. It is treated as neither a ``natural'' entity waiting to be discovered nor a purely theoretical construct. This paper describes how a semantico-pragmatic analyzer, Mikrokosmos, uses knowledge from a situated ontology as well as from language-specific knowledge sources (lexicons and microtheory rules). Also presented are some guidelines for acquiring ontological concepts and an overview of the technology developed in the Mikrokosmos project for large-scale acquisition and maintenance of ontological databases. Tools for acquiring, maintaining, and browsing ontologies can be shared more readily than ontologies themselves. Ontological knowledge bases can be shared as computational resources if such tools provide translators between different representation formats.

Kavi Mahesh
Sun Nov 12 15:20:31 MST 1995