lemon Design Pattern Library

This library consists of a Scala script implementing design patterns using the lemon model and the OWL language to define ontology-lexica.

lemon Design Patterns provide an interface for using the most commonly used lemon patterns for the ontology-lexicon interface. This project represents the converter from the pattern language to RDF/XML as well as a Scala API for working with these patterns.

Usage and Requirements

The project may be compiled using sbt or Maven.

The converter may be executed as follows:

./lemonpatterns lexicon.ldp lexicon.xml

You may omit the second argument to print to standard out. Note that the first execution may require downloading some libraries and may take some time.

If you execute lemonpatterns from another directory you must set the LEMONPATTERNS_HOME variable, e.g.,

 LEMONPATTERNS_HOME=/home/me/lemon.patterns /home/me/lemonpatterns lexicon.ldp

Writing ontology-lexica with patterns

Writing an ontology-lexicon using these patterns involves starting the file with an OntologyLexicon declaration that defines the path of the ontology-lexicon and its language, finally the serialization

Lexicon(<http://www.example.com/published/path>, // Here is where the ontology-lexicon will be published
        "eng", // The language (as an ISO-639 code)
        ... // The entries go here
)

In addition namespaces may be defined before the Lexicon as follows

@prefix dbpedia: <http://dbpedia.org/resource/> .

And used anywhere a full URI would be acceptable as follows

dbpedia:Cat // Generates the URI http://dbpedia.org/resource/Cat

The full syntax for the pattern language is here

Catalogue

Nouns

Names

Names are used for named individuals in the domain, these should be proper nouns

Name("Microsoft",<http://microsoft.com>)

Class Nouns

Class nouns represent genuses of objects from the domain, this includes most common nouns

ClassNoun("cat",dbpedia:Cat) with plural "cats"

Multiple word expressions can be introduced using a simple phrase pattern

ClassNoun(["body"/"common noun" "of"/preposition "water"/"common noun"],dbpedia:BodyOfWater)

Note: On the part of speech quotes are optional on single word values only

If one of more of the words in the expression are inflected the lemmatized form should be given, for example:

ClassNoun(["variedad"/"common noun" "cultivada"/"cultivado"/adjective],dbpedia:CultivatedVariety)

Relational Nouns

These represent relations between two entities that are expressed in sentences as nouns

RelationalNoun("agreement",ontology:agreeAbout,
               propSubj=Subject,
               propObj=PrepositionalObject("about"))

Multivalent Relational Nouns

As with relational nouns but supports more than two arguments

RelationalMultivalentNoun("position",ontology:Employement,
            [ontology:employee as PossessiveAdjunct,
             ontology:role as PrepositionalObject("as") optional,
             ontology:startOfEmployment as PrepositionalObject("since") optional])

Class Relational Nouns

This is a shortcut pattern for nouns that have both a class and property ontological description. An example of this "father", as a father is both a father to someone and a father.

ClassRelationalNoun("father",
                  class = ontology:Father,
                  property = ontology:fatherOf,
                  propObj = PossessiveAdjunct)

Note: PossessiveAdjunct is used to indicate arguments made with "of" or a genitive form, this allows constructions like "John is Betty's father" as well as "John is the father of Betty".

Specifying Gender

Gender may be specified by following the pattern with an appropriate label, e.g.,

ClassNoun("Katze",dbpedia:Cat) feminine with plural "Katzen"

The values for gender are masculine,feminine,neuter,commonGender and otherGender.

Verbs

State Verb

Represents a verb describing a (atemporal) state of an individual. The following example shows how to create an inflectional table for a verb, which can be used with any verb pattern

StateVerb("amare",ontology:loves) 
  with present singular firstPerson  "amo"
  with present singular secondPerson "amas"
  with present singular thirdPerson  "amat"
  with present plural   firstPerson  "amamus"
  with present plural   secondPerson "amatis"
  with present plural   thirdPerson  "amant"

Event Verbs

Event verbs describe an event involving multiple arguments.

EventVerb("give",ontology:GivingEvent,
     [ontology:giver as Subject,
      ontology:recipient as DirectObject,
      ontology:givenObject as IndirectObject]),  

Event verbs may also be modified as follows:

telic durative EventVerb(...)

These classes are as follows

• EventVerb (superclass of all below)
  • (Telic,Durative) AccomplishmentVerb: Verb has an end (i.e., accomplishes a result) and has a duration
  • (Telic,Instant) AchievementVerb: Verb has an end (i.e., achieves a result) but does not have a duration
  • (Nontelic,Durative) ActivityVerb: Verb has no result and occurs for some duration.
  • (Nontelic,Instant) SemelfactiveVerb: Verb has no result and has no duration (occurs instantaneously)

Adjectives

Intersective Adjectives

Intersective adjectives meaning are composed by intersection. As such these adjectives form a natural class of objects in the world.

IntersectiveAdjective("Belgian",ontology:Belgian)

In addition there are two patterns for constructing adjectives from values of properties. The two patterns are for object and datatype properties

IntersectiveDataPropertyAdjective("green",ontology:color,"green")

Property-modifying Adjectives

Property-modifying adjectives alter the meaning of the noun they are attributed to. They can normally only be used in an attributive manner. In the ontology they are generally mappable to object properties

PropertyModifyingAdjective("former",ontology:heldRole)

This works as "X is a former Y" means X heldRole Y

Relational Adjectives

Relational adjectives constitute a relationship between two individuals and as such are properties in the ontology

RelationalAdjective("related",ontology:isRelatedTo,
   relationalArg = PrepositionalObject("to"))

Scalar Adjectives

Scalar adjectives consitute a subspace of a conceptual space and are modelled in the ontology as datatype ranges

ScalarAdjective("big",
  [ontology:size > 5.0 for ontology:Building])