Veruska Zamborlini


2025

OntoLex-Lemon is a model for representing lexical information, focusing on the use of lexical entries in texts rather than their definitions. This work proposes an extension to the model that aims to capture the definition of senses attributed to lexical entries. We explicitly represent a conceptual setup authored by an agent that operates on lexical content. It either proposes new senses for existing lexical entries in a language or coins new terms to express proposed senses. It provides textual and/or formal definitions to senses/concepts, and can serve as an interpretation of other senses/concepts through rephrasing, translation, formalization, or comparison. Because a conceptual setup and its interpretations may not be unanimously accepted, it is important to support the selection of relevant meanings, as for example, those proposed by a certain author. We illustrate the application of our proposed extension with two case studies, one about the philosophical definition of the concept of idea and its interpretations, and one about historical attributions of meaning to the Dutch East India Company (VOC).