Ontoterminology - A New Paradigm for Terminology

Today, collaboration and the exchange of information are increasing steadily and players need to agree on the meaning of words. The first task is therefore to define the domain’s terminology. However, terminology building remains a demanding and time-consuming task, even in specialised domains where standards already exist. While reaching a consensus on the definition of terms written in natural language remains difficult, we have observed that in specialised technical domains, experts agree on the domain conceptualisation when it is defined in a formal language. Based on this observation, we have introduced a new paradigm for terminology called ontoterminology. The main idea is to separate the linguistic dimension from the conceptual dimension of terminology and establish relationships between them. The linguistic component consists of terms (both normalised and non-normalised specialised words) linked by linguistic relationships such as hyponymy and synonymy. The term definition, written in natural-language, is considered a linguistic explanation. The conceptual component is a formal ontology whose concepts are linked by conceptual relationships like the is-a (kind of) and part-of relations. The concept definition, written in a formal language, is viewed as logical specification. An ontoterminology enables us to link these two non-isomorphic networks in a global and coherent system.