La Modellazione Diacronica di Risorse Termino-Ontologiche nell'Ambito delle Digital Humanities: Esperimenti su Clavius
Authors: Silvia Piccini, Andrea Bellandi, Giulia Benotto, Emiliano Giovannetti (CNR-ILC, 2016)
Topic: Latin Resources

Abstract
In this work, a modeling experiment of a diacronic terminological resource (CLAVIUS) is illustrated according to two approaches, the N-ario and the 4D-fluents. The main differences in the two approaches will be presented and discussed. The overall objective of the research introduced here is to show the main advantages and disadvantages that the adoption of a particular model can entail in the modelling of diacronic resources.

Introduction
Pànta rei is the famous expression attributed by Plato to Heraclitus. Everything is subjected to the inexorable law of change: reality, the categories through which we organize it and the words we use to talk about it. What are the tools available to today's digital humanist, who finds himself having to represent in an explicit and formal way such a diacronic evolution of concepts and terms in a given field, so that such formalization is computable to a computer? In recent years, and in particular in the context of Digital Humanities, the importance of operating with technologies that are the basis of the Semantic Web and Linked Open Data has been underlined to ensure interoperability and reuse of resources within the scientific community AUTHOR. In this perspective, ontologies - and the OWL, their standard language of representation - play a fundamental role. However, the fundamentally static nature of the latter and the need to shape aspects of temporal evolution seem at first glance irreconcilable. The reflections that we present in this article are born from the experiences carried out within the Project Clavius on the Web. Among the objectives of the Project, in fact, there is also that of creating a termino-ontological resource (RTO) that represents the evolution of mathematical-astronomical theories from antiquity to the sixteenth - seventeenth century, as described by Clavius in his Euclids Elementorum Libri XV. Accessit XVI and In sphaeram Ioannis de Sacro Bosco Commentarius.

Conclusion
The modeling of the thermo-ontological diacronic resource CLAVIUS through the model to relations N-arie and that 4D-fluents has allowed to evaluate, empirically, those that are the salient differences between the two temporal paradigms. As for the authoring aspect, of primary interest in this work as functional to the need of a digital humanist in the (typically manual) construction of a diaconic resource, the results have shown that, to date, the approach to N-arie relations is the most advantageous, in terms of both the number of ontological entities involved, both the complexity of the SPARQL queries and the availability of support tools. It is intended to deepen this research taking into account the aspects which, of course, follow the most essential aspects of the formalization of terminology and knowledge. First of all, the impact determined by the adoption of a certain model on the reasoning mechanisms will be studied, and therefore, on the possibility by an inferential engine of deriving new knowledge from that explicitly represented in the resource.