Skip to main content
Log in

Lexical Inheritance with Meronymic Relationships

  • Original Paper
  • Published:
Axiomathes Aims and scope Submit manuscript

Abstract

In most computational ontologies, information inheritance is based on the taxonomic relation is_a. A given type inherits from other type only if the latter subsumes the former. We assume, however, that inheritance can be related, not only to the taxonomic relation, but also to the meronymic relationship between parts and wholes. The main aim of this paper is to organise upper-level ontologies associated with lexical information by taking into account part-whole subsumption. As we consider that parts may subsume wholes under specific conditions, ontologies can be defined in terms of systems in which wholes inherit information from its parts. In this article, we describe how part-whole subsumption and, then, meronymic inheritance can be used to deal with type mismatch and metonymic interpretation of polysemous nouns. For this purpose, we attempt to merge old assumptions from both formal ontology and lexical semantics into a homogeneous framework.

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

Access this article

Price excludes VAT (USA)
Tax calculation will be finalised during checkout.

Instant access to the full article PDF.

Institutional subscriptions

Fig. 1

Similar content being viewed by others

Notes

  1. To simplify, nouns, proper names and nominal phrases are semantically interpreted in the same way.

  2. In research on formal ontology, holes are not considered as mere spatial locations but as physical objects which never have matter associated in any location; they are not spaces but rather immaterial objects. For the general purpose of this article, the ontological difference between bounded spaces and immaterial objects will not be taken into account.

  3. By contrast, grinding metonymies (lamb-animal versus lamb-food, see Copestake and Briscoe 1995) represent those cases where the object is still identified by means of the same noun even when the spatial properties (shape and size) of the whole spatio-material configuration have been lost.

References

  • Asher N, Pustejovsky J (2000) The metaphysics of words in context. Ms. Dept. of Computational Linguistics, University of Stuttgart, Germany

  • Borgo S, Guarino N, Masolo C (1996) Stratified ontologies: the case of physical objects. In workshop on ontological engineering (ECAI-96)

  • Carpenter R (1992) The logic of typed feature structures. Theoretical computer science. Cambridge University Press, Cambridge

    Book  Google Scholar 

  • Copestake A, Briscoe T (1995) Semi-productive polysemy and sense extension. J Semantics 12:15–67

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Gamallo P (1998) Construction conceptuelle d’expressions complexes: traitement de la combinaison nom-adjectif. PhD thesis, Université Blaise Pascal, Clermont-Ferrand, France

  • Gamallo P (2000a) Lexical inheritance in upper-level ontologies. In workshop on ontologies and Lexical knowledge bases (OntoLex2000), Sozopol, Bulgaria. Springer, Berlin

  • Gamallo P (2000b) L’interprétation d’expressions complexes nominales analysée comme un processus metonymique. Revue de Sémantique et Pragmatique 7:29–58

    Google Scholar 

  • Guarino N (1998) Some ontological principles for designing upper level lexical resources. In first conference on language resources and evaluations. Granada, Spain

  • Jayez J, Godard D (1995) Principles as lexical methods. In AAAI workshop on representation and acquisition of lexical knowledge. Stanford University, Stanford, pp 27–29

  • Kayser D (1987) Une sémantique qui n’a pas de sens. Langage 87:33–45

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Kleiber G (1994) Nominales. Essais de sémantique référentielle. Armand Colin, Paris

    Google Scholar 

  • Kleiber G (1999) Problèmes de Sémantique. Presses Universitaires Septentrion, Lille

    Google Scholar 

  • Langacker RW (1987) Foundations of cognitive grammar: theoretical prerequisites, vol. 1. Stanford University Press, Stanford

    Google Scholar 

  • Langacker RW (1991) Foundations of cognitive grammar: descriptive applications, vol. 2. Stanford University Press, Stanford

    Google Scholar 

  • Miéville D (1998) Associative anaphora: an attempt at formalisation. J Pragmat 31:327–337

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Nunberg N (1995) Transfers of meaning. J Semantics 12:109–132

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Ooi V (1998) Computer corpus lexicography. Edinburgh University Press, Edinburgh

    Google Scholar 

  • Paiva VD (1993) Types and constraints in the LKB. In: Briscoe T, Copestake A, Paiva VD (eds) Inheritance, defaults and the lexicon. Cambridge University Press, Cambridge

    Google Scholar 

  • Pustejovsky J (1995) The generative lexicon. MIT Press, Cambridge

    Google Scholar 

  • Pustejovsky J (1998) Lexical semantics and formal ontologies. In: Guarino N (ed) Formal ontology in information systems. IOS Press, Amsterdam

  • Pustejovsky J (2001) Type construction and the logic of concepts. In: Bouillon P, Busa F (eds) The syntax of word meaning. Cambridge University Press, Cambridge

    Google Scholar 

  • Smith B (1998) Basic concepts of formal ontology. In: Guarino N (ed) Formal ontology in information systems. IOS Press, Amsterdam

    Google Scholar 

  • Varzi A (1996) Parts, wholes and part-whole relations: the prospects of mereotopology. Data Knowl Eng 20:259–286

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Varzi A (1998) Basic problems of mereotopology. In: Guarino N (ed) Formal ontology in information systems. IOS Press, Amsterdam

    Google Scholar 

Download references

Acknowledgments

This work has been supported by the Spanish Government (MICINN), within the project FFI2010-14986.

Author information

Authors and Affiliations

Authors

Corresponding author

Correspondence to Pablo Gamallo.

Rights and permissions

Reprints and permissions

About this article

Cite this article

Gamallo, P. Lexical Inheritance with Meronymic Relationships. Axiomathes 23, 165–185 (2013). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10516-011-9152-1

Download citation

  • Received:

  • Accepted:

  • Published:

  • Issue Date:

  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s10516-011-9152-1

Keywords

Navigation