Coherence relations in ontologies

Power, Richard (2011). Coherence relations in ontologies. Technical Report 2011/01; Department of Computing, The Open University.

DOI: https://doi.org/10.21954/ou.ro.000160b7

Abstract

I have proposed a method for assigning a rhetorical relation to a pair of OWL statements. Briefly, statements are interpreted as subject and predi- cate sets, and the six set relationships within and across the two statements are classified to derive a ‘coherence pattern’. Of 46 consistent patterns with subjects included in predicates, we selected eleven which were considered co- herent by three different judges. We found that these patterns were related to traditional rhetorical concepts like consequence, elaboration, comparison, contrast, and example, although we were not able to assign relations depend- ing on causality, time, or probability. The merit of the proposed method is that it makes use of the kind of information that an OWL ontology does provide — namely, statements elsewhere in the ontology that are relevant to the pair of statements under consideration.