Combining three Ways of Conveying Knowledge: Modularization of Domain, Terminological, and Linguistic Knowledge in Ontologies

Recently, an overall trend towards increasing complexity of
ontologies could be observed, not only in terms of domain modeling,
where the complexity should correspond to the information to be modeled,
but also as regards the addition of further information, which could
be modeled as external resources to the domain model and linked to its
relevant elements. This concerns for example the addition of terminological
and linguistic information to the description of classes and properties
of ontologies. To respond to this development, we propose a functional
approach to the modularization of ontologies, based on the terminological,
linguistic, and conceptual functions each module fulfills. Only the
conceptual elements and their structural properties should remain in the
domain model, whereas formalized terminology and linguistics are described
in independent modules referencing the domain models. We show
examples of such complexity in Knowledge Representation systems, discuss
related work, and present our approach to modularization in detail.