Basic Units of Lexicons and Ontologies: Words, Senses and Concepts

Dictionaries and ontologies are very important resources not only for linguistic research and applications but also for other areas dealing with knowledge. In general, however, they fall short of our expectations. One reason for this under-expectation is that their basic units are not well-established. Dictionary head words have to be words rather than affixes or phrases. The meaning of a (head) word has to be carved into different senses on the basis of objective criteria. In addition, building blocks of ontologies have to be (simple and/or complex) concepts rather than senses.