Asking the Right Question: how to transform multilingual unstructured data to query semantic databases

Andrés Dominguez Burgos, Koen Kerremans, Rita Temmerman

Research output: Chapter in Book/Report/Conference proceedingConference paper

Abstract

Ontology engineers have long tried to develop mechanisms to automatically transform natural language statements into queries knowledge-systems can deal with. This has been an enormous challenge as natural languages are highly ambiguous and contexts for disambiguating are seldom identifiable through simple linguistic patterns. To circumvent these difficulties, developers of knowledge bases have often opted for the use of a restricted vocabulary and syntax. Normal users, nevertheless, prefer to express themselves in their language. Special languages or schemas tend to reflect one language - the developer's - and make extensibility more difficult. Also multilingual access can be more difficult to handle in that way. In this article we present strategies for transforming queries of natural languages into language-neutral representations that can be more easily transformed into semantic queries. We describe a tool that combines a multilingual database and natural processing modules with a semantic database in order to transform queries in Dutch, French and English into queries from which ambiguity at syntactic and semantic levels have been reduced. We focus on certain aspects of natural language such as negation and collocation preferences to deal with semantics.
Original languageEnglish
Title of host publicationOTM Workshops
EditorsPilar Herrero, Hervé Panetto, Robert Meersman, Tharam Dillon
PublisherSpringer Verlag
Pages262-271
Number of pages10
Volume7567
ISBN (Print)978-3-642-33617-1
Publication statusPublished - 2012
EventOTM 2012 Workshops - Rome, Italy
Duration: 10 Sep 201214 Sep 2012

Publication series

NameLecture Notes in Computer Science

Conference

ConferenceOTM 2012 Workshops
Country/TerritoryItaly
CityRome
Period10/09/1214/09/12

Bibliographical note

Pilar Herrero and Hervé Panetto and Robert Meersman and Tharam Dillon

Keywords

  • collocations
  • natural language queries
  • negation
  • unstructured data
  • structured data
  • SPARQL

Fingerprint

Dive into the research topics of 'Asking the Right Question: how to transform multilingual unstructured data to query semantic databases'. Together they form a unique fingerprint.

Cite this