Domain modelling and NLP: Formal ontologies? Lexica? Or a bit of both?

There are a number of genuinely open questions concerning the use of domain models in nlp. It would be great if contributors to Applied Ontology could help addressing them rather than adding to an already long polemical literature . . . 1 Empiricists vs. Formalists All Over Again? In virtually every workshop on ontologies, terminology, or lexical acquisition I attended in the last years at nlp events I found myself watching (or getting involved in) fierce debates as to which approach to domain categorization is `best': designing a clean, elegant ontology with a clear semantics and based on sound philosophical principles and / or scientific evidence; or relying on evidence from psychology and corpora, and on machine learning techniques, to acquire (automatically, as far as possible) a domain structure that in most cases will be rather messy. (The opposite sides of the argument are presented in (Wilks, 2002) and (Smith, 2004).) Are we back to the bad old days of the `neat' vs ...

• Type: Journal
• Year: 2005
• Where: AO
• Authors: Massimo Poesio
• Keywords: All Over Again, AO 2005, Applied Ontology, Long Polemical Literature