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New Trends of Research in Ontologies and Lexical Resources pp 157–185Cite as

Use of Ontology, Lexicon and Fact Repository for Reference Resolution in Ontological Semantics

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Abstract

This chapter presents an implemented algorithm for resolving reference within the theory of Ontological Semantics with an emphasis on the use of static knowledge resources: ontology—a world model of entity types; fact repository—a world model of entity tokens; and lexicon, which mediates between language and the ontology and fact repository. We show how reference resolution is tightly coupled with overall semantic analysis, from the first stages of determining which expressions have referential function to the final stage of creating a reference link from each referring expression in a text to its “anchor” in the model of memory of the intelligent agent processing the text. As such, there is no single reference resolution task; rather, reference-related subtasks are best distributed throughout an end-to-end text analysis system.

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Notes

  1. 1.

    This figure is further described in Sect. 9.3.

  2. 2.

    Space does not permit a comprehensive overview of reference phenomena, but interested readers can find an accessible, example-rich treatment in [20].

  3. 3.

    Procedural semantic routines, which are recorded, when needed, in a “meaning procedures” zone not shown in the example above, are also largely portable across languages. For more on meaning procedures, see Sect. 9.4.4 and [24].

  4. 4.

    Stanford’s “CoreNLP”, which includes more extensive proper name analysis, was not available until recently.

  5. 5.

    We refer to these missing categories as “unexpressed” rather than the more theoretically-charged “elided” in order concentrate on the fact that these configurations pose difficulties for machine processing, no matter how they are treated within one or another theoretical paradigm.

  6. 6.

    For reasons of space, we omit another aspect of reference processing that is carried out at this stage: the detection of configurations in which the lexical disambiguation of a verbal head should be postponed until it can be informed by the reference resolution of one of its arguments. Interested readers can find relevant discussion in [31].

  7. 7.

    We currently have only a small “universally known” list, not of the magnitude of the lexicon or ontology. Further developing this resource is on the agenda.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. University of Maryland, Baltimore County, MD, USA

    Marjorie McShane & Sergei Nirenburg

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  1. Marjorie McShane
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  2. Sergei Nirenburg
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Editors and Affiliations

  1. Psychology Department, Carnegie Mellon University, Forbes Avenue 5000, Pittsburgh, 15213, Pennsylvania, USA

    Alessandro Oltramari

  2. Faculty of Arts, Language, Cognition and, Vrije University Amsterdam, De Boelelaan 1105, Amsterdam, 1081, Netherlands

    Piek Vossen

  3. Department of Computing, Hong Kong Polytechnic University, PQ806 Mong Man Wai Building, Hong Kong, 999077, Hong Kong SAR

    Lu Qin

  4. Language Technologies Institute, Carnegie Mellon University, Forbes Avenue 5000, Marina Del Rey, 15213, Pennsylvania, USA

    Eduard Hovy

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McShane, M., Nirenburg, S. (2013). Use of Ontology, Lexicon and Fact Repository for Reference Resolution in Ontological Semantics. In: Oltramari, A., Vossen, P., Qin, L., Hovy, E. (eds) New Trends of Research in Ontologies and Lexical Resources. Theory and Applications of Natural Language Processing. Springer, Berlin, Heidelberg. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-642-31782-8_9

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-642-31782-8_9

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