ITHEA International Scientific Society : CONCEPTUAL MODELING IN SPECIALIZED KNOWLEDGE RESOURCES

ITHEA Classification Structure > J. Computer Applications > J.5 ARTS AND HUMANITIES

CONCEPTUAL MODELING IN SPECIALIZED KNOWLEDGE RESOURCES
By: Pamela Faber, Antonio San Martín (2965 reads)

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Abstract: Conceptual modeling is the activity of formally describing aspects of the physical and social world around us for purposes of understanding and communication. The conceptual modeler thus has to determine what aspects of the real world to include, and exclude, from the model, and at what level of detail to model each aspect Kotiadis and Robinson, 2008. The way that this is done depends on the needs of the potential users or stakeholders, the domain to be modeled, and the objectives to be achieved. A principled set of conceptual modeling techniques are thus a vital necessity in the elaboration of resources that facilitate knowledge acquisition and understanding. In this respect, the design and creation of terminological databases for a specialized knowledge domain is extremely complex since, ideally, the data should be interconnected in a semantic network by means of an explicit set of semantic relations. Nevertheless, despite the acknowledged importance of conceptual organization in terminological resources Puuronen, 1995, Meyer et al., 1997, Pozzi, 1999, Pilke, 2001, conceptual organization does not appear to have an important role in their design. It is a fact that astonishingly few specialized knowledge resources available on Internet contain information regarding the location of concepts in larger knowledge configurations Faber et al., 2006. Such knowledge resources do not take into account the dynamic nature of categorization, concept storage and retrieval, and cognitive processing Louwerse and Jeuniaux, 2010, Aziz-Zadeh and Damasio, 2008, Patterson et al., 2007, Gallese and Lakoff, 2005. Recent theories of cognition reflect the assumption that cognition is typically grounded in multiple ways, e.g. simulations, situated action, and even bodily states. This means that a specialized knowledge resource that facilitates knowledge acquisition should thus provide conceptual contexts or situations in which a concept is conceived as part of a process or event. Since knowledge acquisition and understanding requires simulation, this signifies that horizontal relations defining goal, purpose, affordance, and result of the manipulation and use of an object are just as important, if not more so, than vertical generic-specific and part-whole relations. Within the context of recent theories of cognition, this paper examines the frame-based conceptual modeling principles underlying EcoLexicon?, a multilingual knowledge base of environmental concepts (http://ecolexicon.ugr.es/) Faber et al., 2005, 2006, 2007.