The implementation of the axiological parameter in a verbal subontology for natural language processing

Abstract

FunGramKB (FGKB), on the one hand, is a multipurpose lexico-conceptual knowledge base for natural language processing (NLP) systems and comprises three major interrelated knowledge level modules: lexical, grammatical and conceptual. At the conceptual level the core ontology is presented as a hierarchical catalogue of the concepts that a person has in mind and a repository where semantic knowledge is stored. Axiology, on the other hand, is widely considered to be a primitive, basic or key parameter, among others, in the architecture of meaning construction at different levels. This parameter can be traced back to the three subontologies into which FunGramKB can be split: #ENTITY for nouns, # EVENT for verbs, and #QUALITY for adjectives. Even if most of the specific research conducted so far has been devoted to the category #QUALITY, there is no reason to consider verbs as less of an axiological category. Consequently, in this paper we shall concentrate on the subontology # EVENT and explore how the main categories and features of the axiological parameter (good-bad or positive-negative [+/-]) are represented and encoded within FunGramKB ontology, particularly inside semantic properties such as basic or terminal concepts and meaning postulates, or syntactic operators, such as modality or polarity.