Practical Semiotics : A Formal Theory

We address the development of a practical theory of semiotics within the context of the IEEE Standard Upper Ontology effort. The theory has the form of a set of predicates and other terms that are axiomatized in first order logic. We argue that this theory is su fficient for representing many of the subtleties of semantic representation that are likely to arise in the cont ext of interoperability of information systems. 1. SUO Scope And Purpose Recognizing bothh the needd for large ontologies andd the needd for ann openn process leading too a free,, public standard,, a diverse groupp of collaborators from the fields of engineering,, philosophy,, andd informationn science have come together too work onn a Standardd Upper Ontology (SUO).. The SUO email list was createdd inn May of 20000 and,, shortly after that date,, hadd over 1500 subscribers.. The ProjectAuthorizationnRequest(PAR),, whichh details the scope andd purpose for the SUO effort was submittedd too the IEEE inn October andd was approvedd as working groupp P1600.11 inn December. The Standardd Upper Ontology (SUO) will provide definitions for general-purpose terms,, andd it will act as a foundationn for more specific domainn ontologies.. It is estimatedd that it will eventually containn betweenn 10000 andd 25000 terms andd roughly tenn definitional statements for eachh term.. The SUO will have the following purposes:-Designn of new knowledge bases andd databases.. Developers cann craft new knowledge andd define new data elements inn terms of a commonn ontology,, andd thereby gainn some degree of interoperability withh other compliant systems..-Reuse/integrationn of legacy databases.. Data elements from existing systems cann be mappedd just once too a commonn ontology.-Integrationn of domain-specific ontologies.. Suchh ontologies (if they are compliant withh the SUO) will be able too interoperate (too some degree) by virtue of sharedd terms andd definitions.. There are twoo official " starter documents " approvedd by the SUO email list.. The formal semiotic theory too be addressedd inn this paper is containeddinnoneofthosedocuments,,the Suggestedd Upper Mergedd Ontology (SUMO) [1].. The SUMO uses a simplifiedd versionn of KIF [2] calledd SUO-KIF [3] as the language for specifying the ontology. Semiotics is the theory of signs,, andd it has arousedd considerable interest inn a wide range of fields,, Twoo of the original thinkers inn semiotics were Charles Sanders Peirce [4] andd Ferdinandd de Saussure [5].. Eachh of these thinkers positedd a basic theory of signs andd their meanings.. According too De Saussure,, a …