An Ontology of Chinese Radicals: Concept Derivation and Knowledge Representation based on the Semantic Symbols of the Four Hoofed-Mammals

An Ontology of Chinese Radicals: Concept Derivation and Knowledge Representation based on the Semantic Symbols of Four Hoofed-Mammals Chu-Ren Huang, Ya-Jun Yang and Sheng-Yi Chen Institute of Linguistics, Academia Sinica Taipei, Taiwan {churen, Yajun, eagles}@gate.sinica.edu.tw Abstract. Semantic symbols are essential components of Chinese characters. ShuoWenJieZi (Xyu Shen 121), the oldest dictionary of Chinese, is organized according to the radical forms as semantic symbols. Characters are classified according radicals, and their meanings cluster around the basic concept of the semantic symbol. We believe that ShuoWenJieZi radicals systemreflect conventional conceptualization when Chinese character orthography was invented. In this research, we use the semantic symbols representing four hoofed-mammals in ShuoWenJieZi ,“bovid,” “deer,” “cattle,” and “horse,” as our research objects. In principle we assume that semantic symbols represent basic concepts, and further more we distinguish the relations between derived characters and each basic concept to construct a conventionalized ontology headed by basic concepts expressed by the semantic symbols. Our analysis and comparative studies of the semantic symbol ontologies for the four hoofed-mammals show that they share similar conceptual structures strongly motivated by their functions in human society. In particular, we show that the conceptual dependencies between the basic concept of a radical and the meanings of the derived characters can be explained by an enriched version of the Generative Lexicon. Keywords: Ontology; HanZi ; Semantic Lexicon 1. Introduction Chinese radical (yi4fu2,ideographs ;semantic symbols) system offers a unique opportunity for systematic and comprehensive comparison between formal and linguistic ontologies. Previous studies adopt either WordNet-based representation (Wong et al, 2002, and Hsieh, 2006) or SUMO-based mapping (Chou, 2005). Among these studies, Chou and Huang (2007) suggest that the family of Chinese characters sharing the same radical can be linked to a basic concept by Qualia relations. This approach has great implications of accounts for radicals as linguistically conventionalized ontology. In this paper, we take this approach further and try to account for each radical group as domain ontology headed by one basic concept. In particular, we examine in details 4 radicals of animals: 羊 (yang2, bovid) , 鹿(lu4, deer), 牛(niu2, cattle) and 馬 (ma3, horse). Among these four animals, “羊,” “牛,”and “馬”are domesticated and serve specific functions in human society. They are highly related to daily lives of human. One of the interesting research issues is to see if the derived concepts of these four animal radicals reflect the differences which show the interaction between animals and human. Our theoretical foundation is Pustejovsky’s Quilia Structure (Pustejovsky, 1995), and the original analysis of ‘ShuoWenJieZi’(Xu, 121). In ShuoWenJieZi, all Chinese characters are classified as derived from 540 radicals. In this study, we assume that these radicals each represent a basic concept and that all derivative characters are conceptually dependent on that basic concept. Our study aims at accounting for the exact nature of these conceptual dependencies. Combined with previous work, we suggest that conceptual extensions from the 189 22nd Pacific Asia Conference on Language, Information and Computation, pages 189–196 basic concept encoded by a radical can be classified …

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