Towards a Unified Dispositional Framework for Realizable Entities

Realizable entities are properties that can be realized in processes of specific correlated types in which the bearer participates. It will be valuable to create a systematic classification of realizable entities because they are useful for various modeling purposes in ontologies. In this paper we outline a unifying framework for realizable entities (including dispositions and roles) in the upper ontology Basic Formal Ontology (BFO) that is theoretically underpinned by J. McKitrick’s pragmatic approach to dispositions. In particular, we develop a formal ontological account of “extrinsic dispositions” and illustrate its potential applications with clarification of functions and roles in BFO.

Ontological modeling of the International Classification of Functioning, Disabilities and Health (ICF): Activities&Participation and Environmental Factors components

Background The International Classification of Functioning, Disability and Health (ICF) is a classification of health and health-related states developed by the World Health Organization (WHO) to provide a standard and unified language to be used as a reference model for the description of health and health-related states. The concept of functioning on which ICF is based is that of a “dynamic interaction between a person’s health condition, environmental factors and personal factors”. This overall model has been translated into a classification covering all the main components of functioning. However, the practical use of ICF has highlighted some formal problems, mainly concerning conceptual clarity and ontological coherence. Methods In the present work, we propose an initial ontological formalization of ICF beyond its current status, focusing specifically on the interaction between activities and participation and environmental factors. The formalization has been based on ontology engineering methods to drive goal and scope definition, knowledge acquisition, selection of an upper ontology for mapping, conceptual model definition and evaluation, and finally representation using the Ontology Web Language (OWL). Results A conceptual model has been defined in a graphical language that included 202 entities, when possible mapped to the SUMO upper ontology. The conceptual model has been validated against 60 case studies from the literature, plus 6 ad-hoc case studies. The model has been then represented using OWL. Conclusions This formalization might provide the basis for a revision of the ICF classification in line with current efforts made by WHO on the International Classification of Diseases and on the International Classification of Health Interventions.

Deep Semantic Parsing with Upper Ontologies

This paper presents a new method for semantic parsing with upper ontologies using FrameNet annotations and BERT-based sentence context distributed representations. The proposed method leverages WordNet upper ontology mapping and PropBank-style semantic role labeling and it is designed for long text parsing. Given a PropBank, FrameNet and WordNet-labeled corpus, a model is proposed that annotates the set of semantic roles with upper ontology concept names. These annotations are used for the identification of predicates and arguments that are relevant for virtual reality simulators in a 3D world with a built-in physics engine. It is shown that state-of-the-art results can be achieved in relation to semantic role labeling with upper ontology concepts. Additionally, a manually annotated corpus was created using this new method and is presented in this study. It is suggested as a benchmark for future studies relevant to semantic parsing.