Authors:
Rosella Gennari
1
and
Tania di Mascio
2
Affiliations:
1
KRDB, Free University of Bozen-Bolzano, Italy
;
2
University of L’Aquila, Italy
Keyword(s):
Ontology and the semantic web, knowledge management, web-based education.
Related
Ontology
Subjects/Areas/Topics:
Biomedical Engineering
;
Computer-Supported Education
;
Data Engineering
;
e-Learning
;
Enterprise Information Systems
;
Health Information Systems
;
Information Systems Analysis and Specification
;
Knowledge Management
;
Ontologies and the Semantic Web
;
Ontology and the Semantic Web
;
Society, e-Business and e-Government
;
Web Information Systems and Technologies
;
Web Interfaces and Applications
;
Web-Based Education
Abstract:
Sign languages are visual languages used in deaf communities. They are essentially tempo-spatial languages:
signs are made of manual components, e.g., the hand movements, and non-manual components, e.g., facial
expressions. The e-LIS project aims at the creation of the first web bidirectional dictionary for Italian sign
language–verbal Italian. Whereas the lexicographic order is a standard and ‘natural’ way of ordering hence
retrieving words in Italian dictionaries, there is nothing similar for Italian sign language dictionaries. Stokoe-based
notations have been successfully employed for decomposing and ordering signs in paper dictionaries
for Italian sign language; but consulting the dictionaries requires knowing the adopted Stokoe-based notation,
which is not as easy-to-remember and well-known as Italian alphabet is. Users of a web dictionary cannot be
expected to be expert of this. There the role of ontologies comes into play. The ontology presented in this
paper analyses
and relates the formational components of a sign; in some sense, the ontology allows us to
‘enrich’ the e-LIS dictionary with expert information concerning classes of sign components and, above all,
their mutual relations. We conclude this paper with several open questions at the intersection of knowledge
representation and reasoning, semantic web, sign and computational linguistics.
(More)