Standpoint Logic: Multi-Perspective Knowledge Representation

Ontologies and knowledge bases encode, to a certain extent, the standpoints or perspectives of their creators. As differences and conflicts between standpoints should be expected in multi-agent scenarios, this will pose challenges for shared creation and usage of knowledge sources. Our work pursues the idea that, in some cases, a framework that can handle diverse and possibly conflicting standpoints is more useful and versatile than forcing their unification, and avoids common compromises required for their merge. Moreover, in analogy to the notion of family resemblance concepts, we propose that a collection of standpoints can provide a simpler yet more faithful and nuanced representation of some domains. To this end, we present standpoint logic, a multi-modal framework that is suitable for expressing information with semantically heterogeneous vocabularies, where a standpoint is a partial and acceptable interpretation of the domain. Standpoints can be organised hierarchically and combined, and complex correspondences can be established between them. We provide a formal syntax and semantics, outline the complexity for the propositional case, and explore the representational capacities of the framework in relation to standard techniques in ontology integration, with some examples in the Bio-Ontology domain.

Zeugma as a Method of Pragmatic Focusing in a Literary Text (Based on the Material of the German Language)

Introduction.The article analyses the specifics of the functioning of the zeugma in artistic speech. Despite the popularity of this rhetorical figure since ancient times and its use in various spheres of communication, there is still no complete clarity about the essence of this linguistic phenomenon.Methodology and sources.The article considers various interpretations of the zeugma, determines its place in the circle of other rhetorical figures, conducts a structural analysis of zeugmatic constructions, identifies its syntactic and morphological variations, analyzes the stylistic potential. As an empirical material, lyrical and prose texts of German-language literature of the XIX–XX centuries are used, including works by H. Heine, A. Döblin, G. Trakl, G. Benn, K. Edschmid, H. Böll and other authors.Results and discussion.As a rhetorical figure, zeugma is built on the conflict of syntax and semantics, representing several syntactically homogeneous, but semantically heterogeneous elements. Zeugma, as a rule, has a nuclear word in its composition, in which, in conjunction with various actants, different meanings/shades of meanings are actualized, although “non-nuclear” zeugmas are also found. The role of the reference element is most often a verb-predicate, less often the core of the construction becomes an adjective, participle, adverb, noun. The elements of the paratactic series are usually nouns (homogeneous subjects, additions, circumstances), but the analysis also reveals cases of illogical combinations represented by other parts of speech, as well as examples with heterogeneous morphological forms within the same zeugmatic construction. The functional analysis of the zeugma demonstrates the rich stylistic potential of this rhetorical figure, which acts as a means of humor and satire in literary texts, serving to convey emotional states, semantic saturation of the utterance, and the increment of new meanings.Conclusion. Zeugma acts as a significant method of pragmatic focusing in a literary text, being especially widely represented in modernist literature, characterized by semantic multilayering and intensity of artistic expression.

Implementation of an approach for variable data insertion procedures synthesis for structureindependent databases

The aim of this work is to implement an approach for the synthesis of variable data insertion procedures for structureindependent databases. This approach makes it possible to synthesize procedures for inserting data into databases, in which two types of inhomogeneities will be absent: inhomogeneities associated with various forms of representation of minimal structural units; semantic heterogeneities associated with the use of elements that are semantically heterogeneous to the elements of the structure of a structure-independent database. Due to the absence of these inhomogeneities, the productivity of the procedures will be increased in comparison with the initial one. The approbation is carried out on the example of a structure-independent database based on the Tenzer data model. As a result of the work carried out, the following were obtained: the minimum unit of data storage for the database, built on the basis of the Tenzer model; algorithm of action using the developed minimum data storage unit; procedure code. As the minimum data storage unit, a triple of the form <Object, Property, Value> was chosen, and checking the obtained algorithm of actions showed that all the elements present are homogeneous to the database structure based on the Tenzer data model, which indicates the successful testing of this approach.

Deadjectival Verbs of Essive Semantics in German, English and Ukrainian: A Typological Approach

The peculiarities of the semantics and structure of verbs derived from adjectives in German, English, and Ukrainian have been analyzed. The verbal lexemes of the languages compared can be defined by means of a semantic interpretation model “Subject of a Situation Is a Motivating Adjective”; they constitute a semantically heterogeneous group of “essive” verbs (from Lat. esse - ‘to be'). Within the framework of the derivational category of “essive” verbs at the level of derivational semantics subcategories, semantic groups and subgroups have been distinguished. In the semantic structure of “essive” deadjectival verbs of German, English, and Ukrainian, the opposition is reproduced on the basis of an “active/inactive state of the subject of a situation when revealing a feature denoted by a motivating adjective”. On this basis, the “essive” verbs of the compared languages are divided into two derivational subcategories: “proper essive” deadjectival verbs (inactive state of the subject of a situation when revealing a feature) and “quasi-essive” verbs derived from adjectives (active state of the subject when revealing a feature). In terms of interlingual comparison, the author notes the quantitative superiority of the two subcategories of the Ukrainian “active” deadjectival verbs over the corresponding subcategories of German and English, while within each language of comparison the quantitative ratios of the selected subcategories are different: in Ukrainian the subcategory of “proper essive” deadjectival verbs is superior over the subcategory of “quasi-essive” verbs, while in German and English the “quasi-essive” deadjectival verbs are quantitatively superior over the subcategory of “proper essive” deadjectival verbs (in German the quantitative difference is insignificant (nine verbs), and in English the group of “quasi-essive” deadjectival verbs is almost twice as big as in German). Within the selected derivational subcategories of the languages compared and on the basis of the presence/absence and nature of certain additional semantic components in the semantic structure of “essive” deadjectival verbs, semantic groups have been distinguished. Two semantic groups can be clearly distinguished within “proper essive” deadjectival verbs, depending on whether the feature revealed by the subject of a situation is necessarily visually perceptible (“expositive”) or visually imperceptible (“intra-essive”). The group of “expositive” deadjectival verbs of Ukrainian is eight times as big as the corresponding semantic group in German, while in English no deadjectival verbs of “expositive” semantics have been found. In German and English, the main way to derive essive verbs from adjectives is conversion (85% and 56%, respectively). In English, conversion is supplemented with suffix models (44%). Essive suffix deadjectival verbs make up 100% of the material in Ukrainian and 15% in German.

Approach to the synthesis of variable data insertion procedures in structure-independent databases

The aim of developing an approach to the synthesis of variable data insertion procedures in structure-independent databases is to identify and analyze heterogeneities in the existing construction process. Two types of heterogeneities were identified associated with various forms of representing the minimum structural units for constructing the process of constructing the data insertion procedure, as well as semantic heterogeneities associated with the use of elements that are semantically heterogeneous to structural elements of a structure-independent database. To eliminate them, you need to use an approach based on the action designer. It allows to use actions as minimal structural units in the synthesis process, to reveal the meanings of characteristics, presenting them in the form of an action structure. The result of the article is a formulated approach to the synthesis of variable data insertion procedures in structure-independent databases.

FUNCTIONAL AND SEMANTIC CHARACTERS OF AN ADDRESS IN UKRAINIAN AND FRENCH

The vocative function of an address being the basic one is supplemented and modified by a number of other functions actualized in communication, i.e. the phatic one (establishing and developing the contact with the addressee), the status one (reflecting the status responsibility of the communicants), the emotional and attitudinal one (characterizing the addressee and the attitude of the speaker towards the uttered information). Such modification explains the polyfunctional character of the address in communication. All units of address, just like the components of the addressing functional field, are polysemantic and polysemy comprises every type of an address. According to the communicative tasks the following functions can be stated within the vocative one: nominative (naming the addressee), deixis (identifying the addressee), vocative proper (attracting the addressee’s attention). The field model of addresses’ semantic structures allows to research standard and nonstandard vocatives. The standard addresses form the nucleus of the semantic field under research and characterize stability of their application in one of the above-mentioned functions. Nonstandard vocative lexemes (1 % of the total amount of the experimental material) can play the role of an address under certain circumstances. They form semantically heterogeneous (conditioned by a situation) group, located in the periphery area of the semantic field of addresses. The addresses that include anthroponyms form the most widely used group (64,5 % in Ukrainian and 68,1 % in French), the second place belongs to the addresses with appellatives (34,6 % and 29,9 %, correspondingly). As to the composition of appellatives in the status and role addresses they comprise 36,4 % in Ukrainian and 34,9 % in French. Attitudinal addresses reach 63 % and 65,1 %, correspondingly.

Generating IFC models from heterogeneous data using semantic web

Purpose – This paper aims to develop a framework to represent semantic web query results as Industry Foundation Class (IFC) building models. The subject of interoperability has received considerable attention in the construction literature in recent years. Given the distributed, semantically heterogeneous data sources, the problem is to retrieve information accurately and with minimal human intervention by considering their semantic descriptions. Design/methodology/approach – This paper provides a framework to translate semantic web query results into the XML representations of IFC schema and data. Using the concepts and relationships in an IFC schema, the authors first develop an ontology to specify an equivalent IFC entity in the query results. Then, a mapping structure is defined and used to translate and fill all query results into an ifcXML document. For query processing, the proposed framework implements a set of predefined query mappings between the source schema and a corresponding IFC output schema. The resulting ifcXML document is validated with an XML schema validating parser and then loaded into a building information modeling (BIM) authoring tool. Findings – The research findings indicate that semantic web technology can be used, accurately and with minimal human intervention, to maintain semantic-level information when transforming information between web-based and BIM formats. The developed framework for representing IFC-compatible outputs allows BIM users to query and access building data at any time over the web from data providers. Originality/value – Currently, the results of semantic web queries are not supported by BIM authoring tools. Thus, the proposed framework utilizes the capabilities of semantic web and query technologies to transform the query results to an XML representation of IFC data.

Towards maximal unification of semantically diverse ontologies for controversial domains

Purpose – Ontologies are prone to wide semantic variability due to subjective points of view of their composers. The purpose of this paper is to propose a new approach for maximal unification of diverse ontologies for controversial domains by their relations. Design/methodology/approach – Effective matching or unification of multiple ontologies for a specific domain is crucial for the success of many semantic web applications, such as semantic information retrieval and organization, document tagging, summarization and search. To this end, numerous automatic and semi-automatic techniques were proposed in the past decade that attempt to identify similar entities, mostly classes, in diverse ontologies for similar domains. Apparently, matching individual entities cannot result in full integration of ontologies’ semantics without matching their inter-relations with all other-related classes (and instances). However, semantic matching of ontological relations still constitutes a major research challenge. Therefore, in this paper the authors propose a new paradigm for assessment of maximal possible matching and unification of ontological relations. To this end, several unification rules for ontological relations were devised based on ontological reference rules, and lexical and textual entailment. These rules were semi-automatically implemented to extend a given ontology with semantically matching relations from another ontology for a similar domain. Then, the ontologies were unified through these similar pairs of relations. The authors observe that these rules can be also facilitated to reveal the contradictory relations in different ontologies. Findings – To assess the feasibility of the approach two experiments were conducted with different sets of multiple personal ontologies on controversial domains constructed by trained subjects. The results for about 50 distinct ontology pairs demonstrate a good potential of the methodology for increasing inter-ontology agreement. Furthermore, the authors show that the presented methodology can lead to a complete unification of multiple semantically heterogeneous ontologies. Research limitations/implications – This is a conceptual study that presents a new approach for semantic unification of ontologies by a devised set of rules along with the initial experimental evidence of its feasibility and effectiveness. However, this methodology has to be fully automatically implemented and tested on a larger dataset in future research. Practical implications – This result has implication for semantic search, since a richer ontology, comprised of multiple aspects and viewpoints of the domain of knowledge, enhances discoverability and improves search results. Originality/value – To the best of the knowledge, this is the first study to examine and assess the maximal level of semantic relation-based ontology unification.

Web Search using Improved Concept Based Query Refinement

The information extracted from Web pages can be used for effective query expansion. The aspect needed to improve accuracy of web search engines is the inclusion of metadata, not only to analyze Web content, but also to interpret. With the Web of today being unstructured and semantically heterogeneous, keyword-based queries are likely to miss important results. . Using data mining methods, our system derives dependency rules and applies them to concept-based queries. This paper presents a novel approach for query expansion that applies dependence rules mined from a large Web World, combining several existing techniques for data extraction and mining, to integrate the system into COMPACT, our prototype implementation of a concept-based search engine.