Skip to main content

The Semantic Web as a Linguistic Resource: Opportunities for Natural Language Generation

  • Conference paper

Abstract

This paper argues that, because the documents of the semantic web are created by human beings, they are actually much more like natural language documents than theory would have us believe. We present evidence that natural language words are used extensively and in complex ways in current ontologies. This leads to a number of dangers for the semantic web, but also opens up interesting new challenges for natural language processing. This is illustrated by our own work using natural language generation to present parts of ontologies.

This is a preview of subscription content, log in via an institution.

Buying options

Chapter
USD   29.95
Price excludes VAT (USA)
  • Available as PDF
  • Read on any device
  • Instant download
  • Own it forever
eBook
USD   169.00
Price excludes VAT (USA)
  • Available as PDF
  • Read on any device
  • Instant download
  • Own it forever
Softcover Book
USD   219.99
Price excludes VAT (USA)
  • Compact, lightweight edition
  • Dispatched in 3 to 5 business days
  • Free shipping worldwide - see info

Tax calculation will be finalised at checkout

Purchases are for personal use only

Learn about institutional subscriptions

Preview

Unable to display preview. Download preview PDF.

Unable to display preview. Download preview PDF.

References

  1. R. Barzilay, K. McKeown, and M. Elhadad. Information fusion in the context of multi-document summarization. In Proceedings of the 37th Annual Meeting of the Association for Computational Linguistics, pages 550–557. Association for Computational Linguistics, 1999.

    Google Scholar 

  2. K. Bontcheva and Y. Wilks. Automatic report generation from ontologies: the miakt approach. In Ninth International Conference on Applications of Natural Language to Information Systems (NLDB’2004), Manchester, UK, August 2004.

    Google Scholar 

  3. G. Burek, M. Vargas-Vera, and E. Moreale. Indexing student essays paragraphs using lsa over an integrated ontological space. In Proceedings of International Workshop on eLearning for Computational Linguistics and Computational Linguistics for eLearning, Geneva, 2004.

    Google Scholar 

  4. A. Hameed, A. Preece, and D. Sleeman. Ontology reconciliation. In S. Staab and R. Studer, editors, Handbook on Ontologies in Information Systems, pages 231–250. Springer Verlag, 2003.

    Google Scholar 

  5. Graeme Hirst. Ontology and the lexicon. In S. Staab and R. Studer, editors, Handbook on Ontologies, pages 209–230. Springer Verlag, 2004.

    Google Scholar 

  6. Richard Kittredge, Tanya Korelsky, and Owen Rambow. On the need for domain communication knowledge. Computational Intelligence, 7(4):305–314, 1991.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  7. D. McDermott. Artificial intelligence meets natural stupidity. In J. Haugeland, editor, Mind Design, pages 143–160. Bradford Books, 1981.

    Google Scholar 

  8. D. L. McGuinness and F. van Harmelen. Owl web ontology language overview, http://www.w3.org/TR/owl-features/, 2004.

    Google Scholar 

  9. C. Mellish, M. Reape, D. Scott, L. Cahill, R. Evans, and D. Paiva. A reference architecture for generation systems. Natural Language Engineering, 10(3/4):227–260, 2004.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  10. G. Miller. Wordnet: A lexical database for english. CACM, 38(11):39–41, 1995.

    Google Scholar 

  11. Ehud Reiter and Robert Dale. Building Natural Language Generation Systems. Cambridge University Press, 2000.

    Google Scholar 

  12. J. Wagner, J. Rogers, R. Baud, and J-R. Scherrer. Natural language generation of surgical procedures. Medical Informatics, 53:175–192, 1999.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  13. G. Wilcock. Talking owls: Towards an ontology verbalizer. In Human Language Technology for the Semantic Web and Web Services, ISWC-2003, pages 109–112, Sanibel Island, Florida, 2003.

    Google Scholar 

  14. Y. Zhang, W. Vasconcelos, and D. Sleeman. Ontosearch: An ontology search engine. In Proceedings of the Twenty-fourth SGAI International Conference on Innovative Techniques and Applications of Artificial Intelligence. Springer Verlag, 2004.

    Google Scholar 

Download references

Author information

Authors and Affiliations

Authors

Editor information

Editors and Affiliations

Rights and permissions

Reprints and permissions

Copyright information

© 2006 Springer-Verlag London Limited

About this paper

Cite this paper

Mellish, C., Sun, X. (2006). The Semantic Web as a Linguistic Resource: Opportunities for Natural Language Generation. In: Bramer, M., Coenen, F., Allen, T. (eds) Research and Development in Intelligent Systems XXII. SGAI 2005. Springer, London. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-84628-226-3_7

Download citation

  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-84628-226-3_7

  • Publisher Name: Springer, London

  • Print ISBN: 978-1-84628-225-6

  • Online ISBN: 978-1-84628-226-3

  • eBook Packages: Computer ScienceComputer Science (R0)

Publish with us

Policies and ethics