Philosophising Lexical Meaning as an O nto L ex- L emon Extension (2025)

Abstract: OntoLex-Lemon is a model for representing lexical information, focusing on the use of lexical entries in texts rather than their definitions. This work proposes an extension to the model that aims to capture the definition of senses attributed to lexical entries. We explicitly represent a conceptual setup authored by an agent that operates on lexical content. It either proposes new senses for existing lexical entries in a language or coins new terms to express proposed senses. It provides textual and/or formal definitions to senses/concepts, and can serve as an interpretation of other senses/concepts through rephrasing, translation, formalization, or comparison. Because a conceptual setup and its interpretations may not be unanimously accepted, it is important to support the selection of relevant meanings, as for example, those proposed by a certain author. We illustrate the application of our proposed extension with two case studies, one about the philosophical definition of the concept of idea and its interpretations, and one about historical attributions of meaning to the Dutch East India Company (VOC).

## introduction the ontolex-lemon 1 w3c recommendation for representing lexical information focuses on the various usages of lexical entries in texts. while this approach has proven effective in many contexts, it was not designed to capture the definitions that underpin the lexical senses attributed to the entries. several extensions have been proposed to enhance the expressiveness of the ontolex-lemon model in different aspects, such as capturing morphological decomposition (decomp module), representing translations and lexical variation (vartrans module), describing metadata about lexical resources (lime module), and also linking multilingual linguistic resources (through linguistic linked open 1 www.w3.org/2016/05/ontolex/ data (llod) initiatives) @xcite . however, to the best of our knowledge, none of them directly addresses the need to represent the definitional and interpretative foundations of lexical senses or concepts. to address this gap, we propose an extension to the ontolex-lemon model at a conceptual level, that is, not yet implemented. the extension enables explicit representation of a conceptual setup providing meaning attributed to lexical entries as textual or formal definitions by original authors and/or by other authors interpreting the original ones. in this work we use the term conceptual setup as generic label for a (loose) view/conceptualization (e.g., a term coined in journalism), an expert-level conceptualization/theory (e.g., a domain-specific definitions in a scholarly text), or a fully developed theory (e.g., a formal philosophical framework). we also refer to definition of lexical sense and lexical concept somewhat interchangeably, as the latter is typically lexicalized through the former in a particular language. finally we consider interpretation as rephrasing, translating, explaining or formalizing someone else's conceptual setup with the intention of preserving the intended meaning, as opposed to (i) intentionally changing the meaning (as in correcting or complementing it) or (ii) directly/originally describing a conceptual set up (as in "interpreting reality"). while not all lexical senses have a specific source/author for their definitions, and usage may diverge from original definitions, our proposed extension aims to systematically capture those definitions and their interpretations for which there is traceable and verifiable evidence. this approach thus aims to enrich representations of lexical meaning, ultimately supporting the analysis and understanding of how concepts evolve over time. to illustrate and motivate our proposal, we present two case studies from the digital humanities domain in section 3. the parallel of these two cases is that both combine computational methods and digital humanities expertise to deal with the challenge of how concepts evolve or change over time in their specific domain, namely philosophy and history. they address similar research questions, such as: how have certain concepts changed/evolved? what kind of changes have they undergone? and how to model these conceptual changes in a way that is computationally manageable and interpretable for answering humanities research questions? by introducing our extension to the ontolex-lemon model applied to case studies from the domains of philosophy and history, we demonstrate its potential for supporting and enriching digital humanities research in general. however, the extension is broadly conceived and therefore applicable to other domains where lexical definitions also evolve or diverge, such as medicine, law, and science @xcite . the first example is from the eideas project within the "concepts in motion" lab, foot_0 a group aiming to trace computationally how concepts evolve over time. in philosophy, (re)interpreting a theory, or a concept within a theory, often requires a profound and concrete understanding of the implications behind the words that are used to formulate the concept or theory in question. during the interpreting process, interpreters usually need to assign meanings to the word/lexicon that is core to the concept/theory according to their understanding. based on different underlying assumptions or philosophical perspectives, interpreters can have various interpretations and applications of the original concept/theory. to have new insights or approaches to a concept/theory, philosophers usually need to engage with the arguments and counterarguments that have been proposed about this concept/theory over time. in this background, our extension to the ontolex-lemon model can help trace the evolution and (re)interpretations of a philosophical concept/theory by providing a dynamic and multifaceted perspective on its meaning and applications. the second example is from the "trifecta" project, foot_1 which combines computational linguistics and semantic web technologies to extract and model, from the maritime and food history domains, concepts in their contexts, such as the dutch east india company, slavery, coffee, and cinnamon. (van erp, 2023) points out that large knowledge graphs (kgs) such as wikidata and dbpedia only express a limited representation of the concepts and entities they represent. for instance, at the time of writing (van erp, 2023), dbpedia focuses in representing the concept coffee on the food dimension, while it could be explored through multiple aspects, such as a plant, the activity of drinking the drink, a colonial good, and more. the project aims to automatically capture different dimensions of concepts in various contexts and represent this multi-dimensionality in knowledge graphs. towards this goal, trifecta focuses on dealing with key challenges: a. identity (what the concept is and how it is perceived), b. change (how this concept evolved over time), and c. the long tail (what lowfrequency contexts are connected to this concept). linguistic information supported by the ontolex-lemon ontology can play a role in tackling these challenges. the schema in figure 1 that illustrates scholarly and historical texts representing different meanings and interpretations attached to the concept of the voc. the remainder of this paper is organised as follows. in section 2 we discuss related work, followed by two case studies stemming from digital humanities scenarios and competency questions for the proposed model to address in section 3. in section 4 we present our proposed extension to the ontolex-lemon model by providing uml representation, and we illustrate our extension with two schemas that instantiate the model for our case studies. we present our discussion revolving around the relationship to other modules and models in section 5 and to what extent the competency questions are addressed in section 6. our conclusions and directions for future work respectively are presented in section 7. ## related work ontolex-lemon @xcite results from an effort of the ontology lexicon (ontolex) community group becoming a w3c standard model for providing rich linguistic grounding to ontologies. it provides means to connect ontology entities to lexical entries with their morphological and syntactic properties. it is designed to be combined with the other four ontolex modules: syntax and semantics (synsem), decomposition (decomp) variation and translation (vartrans) and linguistic metadata (lime). several modules and extensions to ontolex are reviewed in @xcite (and similar examples throughout). the synsem module is concerned with providing semantics to the lexical entries by connecting them to existing ontologies that may provide a formal specification to constrain the meaning of a concept. the goal of our proposal is (i) not to rely on the existence/adequacy of an owl foot_2 ontology, but on documented conceptualizations/theories backing the senses attributed to the entries; (ii) to allow for formal definitions to be provided in formal languages beyond owl and (iii) to allow for an owl ontology to be derived from well-annotated theoretical sources ultimately providing also a detailed provenance for the concepts in the ontology. the vartrans module models translation as a relation between senses, defining an exact (nonquestionable) correspondence between them. in contrast, we propose an interpretation relation among lexical concepts that accommodates subjectivity and variation. it could ultimately serve as translations when the provided interpretation is accepted as valid. the lime module (linguistic metadata) provides a standardized way to describe metadata about linguistic resources, such as the lexicon or the conceptualization set. it includes information about the language(s) covered, the number of lexical entries, the structure of the lexicon, and its linkage to other resources. this module supports interoperability and facilitates the discovery and integration of lexical datasets on the web. however, it does not suffice to address the requirements for evidence supporting the attribution of meaning to lexical entries as envisaged in our proposal. @xcite provides an overview of research projects that use linguistic linked data vocabularies to create and publish lexical resources in various languages using the ontolex-lemon model (and its extensions). the paper introduces representative projects across various domains and use cases, including digital humanities, and discusses the influence of these projects on the use or definition of linguistic linked data models and vocabularies in detail. two examples of related projects designed for the lexical modeling of historical domain-specific vocabulary are dit-mao-lexo-maia @xcite and alma @xcite . both initiatives share a similar goal: to capture the context in which certain senses were used (or proposed), particularly within historical or scholarly sources. however, their so-lutions do not explicitly model the provenance, interpretation, and formalization of definitions. ## case studies and competency questions this section presents two case studies that were devised with domain experts in the humanities domain including a set of competency questions for the proposed model to address. ## ontolex-lemon extension the proposed extension is depicted in figure 2 using a uml foot_3 diagram. the classes and relations from ontolex-lemon and its modules are prefixed accordingly (olex as short for ontolex) and depicted in shades of green and yellow, while the proposed ones are not prefixed and are depicted in purple color. our proposal is intended as a modular extension, specializing or complementing the entities of the ontolex-lemon framework, enabling the representation of the provenance of lexical entries, senses and concepts, and the modeling of interpretive or derivational relationships between them. a view/conceptualization is composed of defined lexical concepts lexicalized as defined lexical senses. it is authored by an agent and authored at at a certain point in time (temporal extension) in an creation event possibly described in a document. it is expressed as a lexicon and may also coin a coinedlexicalentry. when the author is an specialised agent (for the subject in question), then the conceptualization can be considered as a theory. if it provides formalisedlexicalconcept with a formal definition, it is then a formalisedtheory. a formalization can be provided in any language/syntax, such as owl manchester syntax foot_4 or swi-prolog foot_5 . as long as they are provided with the appropriate "language" annotation, e.g. @manchester or @swiprolog or ^^:manchester or ^^:swiprolog, a script can select the formal definition of selected concepts to compose an output description that can be input for a proper reasoning service. moreover, a view/conceptualization can be an interpretation of one or more views/conceptualizations, if it provides lexicalconcepts that are interpretations of concepts in other views/conceptualizations. if it provides interpretations for all the entries in another view/conceptualization, the lexicon expressing the interpreting one can be modeled as providing an interpretation of the lexicon expressing the other under interpretation. to illustrate the proposed extension, we present two schemas that instantiate the model for our case studies. the color code refers to the respective classes according to figure 2 , having the lexical entries and their forms grouped in a gray box. first, figure 3 illustrates the case study bolzano's theory of ideas & interpretations (subsection 3.1). the lexical entry for which the canonical form is vorstellung in german, has its corresponding sense proposed by the mentioned theory, which is the lexicalized sense of a lexical concept having as definition the original text by bolzano (detailed web annotation provided later). this provides provenance for the sense, namely, that it originates from bolzano's theory. analogously, betti's theory proposes a sense for the lexical entry with canonical form idea that evokes the lexical concept whose textual definition in english is the rephrasing in the original text by betti. it is an interpretation of the lexical concept lexicalized by the sense proposed by bolzano. rather than asserting that the senses for idea and vorstellung refer to exactly the same sense or are a translation of each other, which would imply a perfect equivalence, we instead represent that idea, as proposed in betti's chapter, as linked to a distinct sense that is an interpretation of bolzano's original sense. in this way, we preserve both the nuance of interpretation and the provenance of each contribution. furthermore, because betti's entire chapter is dedicated to interpreting bolzano's work, we model their theory as an interpretation of bolzano's original theory. the lexicon that expresses betti's theory thus provides interpretations of the lexical entries that express bolzano's theory, or translations for them if betti's interpretations are taken as valid. finally, hungerbühler's theory provides a formalization in owl-dl that is an interpretation of betti's theory, which in turn interprets bolzano's original theory. the sense proposed by hungerbühler is thus expressed through an owl class (identified here by the illustrative uri www://ex ample.org/bolzano#idea) which is defined as equivalent to the formalization proposed by him. this formalization not only establishes a semantic anchor for the sense in question but also enables its use in automated reasoning tasks. by expressing the definition in a formal language such as owl-dl (e.g., in manchester syntax), an owl ontology can be generated and reasoned over using standard semantic web tools. it is important to note that although owl-dl was selected for this particular case study, the proposed approach is not restricted to it; any other formal representation language could be employed to capture the definitions and support similar reasoning workflows. next, figure 4 illustrates the case study voc as a "company-state" (subsection 3.2). here we have two lexical entries, for which the form is eic in english (english abbreviation for the "english east india company") and another one for which the form is voc in dutch (dutch abbreviation for the "dutch east india company"). first, stern proposes a sense for eic entry that evokes the lexical concept whose textual definition in english describes it as a company-state. next weststeijn applies stern definitions as an analogy to the voc concept, actually proposing to it also a sense to the corresponding entry that evokes a similarly defined lexical concept. finally, odegard agree with them both, rephrases their definitions applied to both eic and voc entries, this providing a reinterpretation of the lexical concepts lexicalized by the senses proposed by @xcite important to notice, an dotted red arrow connecting stern and weststeijn's concepts is meant to express the analogy relation between the concepts, which however has not being yet included in our proposal and is therefore object of investigation for future work. finally, figure 5 illustrates how the web annotation vocabulary foot_6 can be used to document the provenance of both lexical entries and concepts. it describes two annotations having as source the same book of bolzano. one has as body the lexical entry vorstellung and the other has as body the lexical concept the entry evokes. they have selectors that describe the exact text referring to the bodies of the annotation (respectively the lexical entry and its definition) and indicating their location in the whole text by assigning a prefix and suffix. ## relation to other modules and models in this section we discuss the possible relations of our proposal with two ontolex modules, in particular lime and vartrans, and with prov-o. we will further investigate the positive or negative consequences before incorporating them into the proposed extension. the lime (the linguistic metadata) foot_7 module defines a lime:conceptualizationset as associating a ontolex:conceptset with a lime:lexicon. one could consider a view/conceptualization as a specialization of ontolex:conceptset, although the latter is clearly more than a just set of concepts. it may be a related to a lime:conceptualizationset since it is meant to bind the lexical concepts in the concept set and entries in the lexicon. the relation to the vartrans foot_8 module, which defines lexico-semantic relations such as vartrans:translation between ontolex:senses brings a more complex issue with respect to how to define the interpretation and what is its relation between vartrans:translation and interpretation. we see a few possibilities: (i) a vartrans:translation is a specialization of interpretation, which would mean, among other things, that they would have to hold both between ontolex:lexicalsenses or between ontolex:lexicalconcepts; (ii) a variation of the previous one is that they could be overlapping classes, meaning not all interpretations are translations and not all translations are interpretations (in the sense that they are not questionable); (iii) more aligned with our current proposal is that interpretation hold between ontolex:lexicalconcepts, vartrans:translation hold between ontolex:lexicalsenses, and the former could be derived from the latter; and (iv) it could also be that intepretation hold between ontolex:lexicalsenses and between ontolex:lexicalconcepts. the prov-o foot_9 aims to support the representation of provenance information, either by being directly used or by serving as a reference model for creating domain specific provenance information. its main entities are prov:entity, prov:activity and prov:agent among which several provenance relations hold, for example, prov:wasderivedfrom indicates that an entity is changed or created based on another, while and prov:wasattributedto ascribes an entity to an agent. since our domain does require more specific provenance, such as the inter- ## addressing the competency questions in this section, we discuss whether the competency questions and some variations can be addressed by the ontolex-lemon base model, by combining it with other modules or vocabularies, or by the proposed extension. figure 6 is a variation of the instantiation in figure 3 including, in orange dashed lines, some of the aforementioned properties as alternatives to the proposed extension. it highlights the paths that could provide answers to the complementary questions cq1.1, cq1.2 and c1.3. the dashed purple paths illustrate the paths using the extension, while the dashed-dotted orange paths illustrate the alternative paths. it illustrates that, although similar results can be obtained with existing vocabularies, the proposed extension offers greater domain specificity, making it more suitable for guiding consistent and semantically accurate use. ## conclusion and future work we propose a conceptual extension to ontolex-lemon with the purpose of representing the provenance of senses with evidence. it allows for expressing conceptual setups as well as their interpretations, as well as expressing the textual or formal definitions of the concepts, accompanied by annotations leading to the excerpt of original text where the definition is provided. the current proposal addresses competency questions 1 to 5. competency questions 6 and 7 are challenging regarding evolution of concepts and comparison among them and will be addressed in future work, as well as new competency quesitons. as our aim is to outline, at a conceptual level, how the ontolex-lemon model could be extended to address the proposed competency questions, the implementation is still to be investigated. for that we would consider the reuse of existing vocabularies, such as prov-o, skos and dc-terms foot_11 , as well as structured representations like nanopublications foot_12 . it is also important to further investigate the connections to other modules and extensions of ontolex. next we will conduct a practical evaluation of our proposal by applying it not only to extended versions of our case studies but to related cases from the literature. we furthermore plan to investigate the alignment of our proposal with existing models to address upcoming challenges. one promising direction is the integration with the linguistic annotation scheme grasp @xcite , a framework that adopts a multilayered approach in four layers, namely events, attribution, factuality, and opinion. we aim to explore how our proposed model for representing definitions and interpretations can be integrated with grasp. in particular, the opinion layer offers a promising space to explore differing theoretical perspectives, conceptual interpretations, and scholarly disagreements. another relevant direction is the alignment with the lmm (linguistic meta-model) @xcite , meant for representing heterogeneous lexical knowledge, providing a semiotic-cognitive representation of linguistic knowledge grounded in dolce foundational ontology @xcite . in particular, it considers different ways of assigning meaning to an expression, expliciting the ontological nature of the "meaning definitions" and the relations between them, which can be relevant for understanding how to relate and compare the definitions of lexical concepts. in terms of modelling concept evolution, we also want to explore geographical and temporal dimensions because the meanings and the interpretations of concepts can vary across time and geography. geographical factors can influence how a concept is understood and used in a specific place. for example, the voc might be perceived differently in the former dutch colonies from a postcolonial perspective than in the netherlands from a perspective of dutch national history. 15 temporal dimensions, including historical periods, cultural-societal shifts, and technological advancements, also reveal how concepts evolve over time and how their interpretations change. for example, the concept of "privacy" has undergone significant transformation in the digital age, evolving from warren and brandeis's 1890 conception of "the right to be let alone" to contemporary debates between individual autonomy-based approaches versus social relational frameworks that "surpass the perspective of the individual" @xcite . survey data demonstrates measurable temporal shifts in privacy attitudes, with older adults more concerned about their online security and privacy compared to the younger generations, reflecting broader culturalsocietal shifts in how privacy is conceptualized in digital contexts @xcite . highlighting the geographical and temporal contexts from which a concept or interpretation emerges is likely to promote historiographical practices, and representing geographical and temporal information along with lexical information can contribute to this advancement. the documentation of our extension can be found at https://github.com/trifecta-proje ct/lexical-sense-definition .