John McCrae (Uni BielefeldBielefeld is an independent city that is the largest city of the Ostwestfalen-Lippe Region. The city is situated below a pass separating the Northern and Southern Teutoburg Forest. The centre of Bielefeld is situated on the eastern side of the Teutoburg Forest, but the modern city incorporates ...), Elena Montiel-Ponsoda (Universidad Politécnica de MadridCelebrated its 25th anniversary in 1996, although the majority of its centres are over hundreds of years old and were founded in the 18th and 19th centuries. Each of them maintained its independence until being grouped together to form the UPM. It is no exaggeration to state that over one and a ...) and Tobias Wunner (DERI GalwayCentre for Science, Engineering and Technology (CSET) established in 2003 with funding from the Science Foundation Ireland. The vision of the Digital Enterprise Research Institute is to be recognised as one of the leading international web science research institutes interlinking technologies, ...) will hold a tutorial at the ESWC 2011 with the title “Enriching the Semantic Web with Linguistic Information“. We had a chance to talk to them beforehand:

Can you please tell us about the aims and purpose of your tutorial and the importance of incorporating linguistic information in the Semantic Web?

With the continuing growth of linked data and semantic technologies the incorporation of linguistic descriptions into Semantic Web resources has become a challenging issue. The integration of linguistic information especially on a multilingual level could greatly benefit Natural Language ProcessingNatural Language processing (NLP) is a field of computer science and linguistics concerned with the interactions between computers and human (natural) languages. In theory, natural-language processing is a very attractive method of human-computer interaction. Natural-language understanding is ... (NLPNatural Language processing (NLP) is a field of computer science and linguistics concerned with the interactions between computers and human (natural) languages. In theory, natural-language processing is a very attractive method of human-computer interaction. Natural-language understanding is ...) applications. Furthermore, the continuing growth of ontologies for semantic modeling and the use of terminological resources to add human language descriptions has raised the issue of how to add linguistic information to ontologies and linked data vocabularies and to represent models of lexical and terminological information in a way which is compatible with Semantic Web standards. Prominent examples here are, for instance, multilingual language tags in RDF Schema or SKOSSimple Knowledge Organization System (SKOS) is a family of formal languages designed for representation of thesauri, classification schemes, taxonomies, subject-heading systems, or any other type of structured controlled vocabulary. SKOS is built upon RDF and RDFS, and its main objective is to ...’s success in bringing terminological information to the Semantic Web.

In the Tutorial we would like to discuss trends and novel models such as Lemon – the lexicon model for ontologies – to show possible future directions. The tutorial is targeted at researchers and practitioners interested in learning how to enrich ontologies with linguistic information in one or several natural languages and NLP tool developers interested in understanding how Semantic Web resources can be leveraged fro NLP. There will be two hands-on sessions in this tutorial.

Why did you choose to use PoolParty thesaurus management system in your tutorial?

To create terminology models on the web there are only few tools available which are often very technical and not straightforward to use for non-experts. We found that PoolPartyWeb based ontology manager which can serve as a central hub for your knowledge organization. With PoolParty you can organize and maintain knowledge models based on widely accepted specifications like RDF, SPARQL and SKOS. in contrast to other SKOS editors has an attractive and usable interface. In addition the web based interface was preferable, as it did not require the participants to download software, the immediate publishing of linked data is more compatible with linked data principles and the tool has similarities to our own tools for working with lemon.

Thank you for this interview!