The paper aims at contributing to the understanding of the Medieval Brain from a knowledge engineering perspective. As the brain is conceived as locus of cognition and knowledge in medieval medicine, we want to focus on the representation of medieval medico-botanical knowledge by means of a three-level text-termino-ontological resource. The resource is based on lemon (a model for the representation of lexica as RDF) and a set of ontologies represented in OWL and consists of (i) a medieval termino-ontological resource, (ii) a modern termino-ontological resource and (iii) a documentation corpus. It is developed and implemented within the DFG-funded project "Dictionnaire de Termes Médico-botaniques de l'Ancien Occitan" (DiTMAO). In an introductory part we will briefly introduce the aims of the project and the particularities of the corpus. The corpus consists of medical monographs in Latin script but also of so-called synonym lists in Hebrew script. These lists can be described as ancient multilingual dictionaries, in our case of Old Occitan, (Judaeo-)Arabic, Hebrew, Latin or other Romance languages and sometimes Greek and Aramaic, and they are of particular importance because the equivalent terms in other ancient languages help to determine the meaning of otherwise opaque Old Occitan terms. After introducing the three components of the resource, given some examples from our corpus, we elaborate, in the main part of paper, a solution to the problem of representing the relation between medieval medical terms or concepts and their ancient and modern correspondences. The problem concerns in particular the process of determining the terms´ meaning through the documentation of each term in corpus-external dictionaries and editions, and how this process can be represented in a comprehensive and transparent way. We propose to relate the terms of the medieval termino-ontological resource at a lexical level using relations such as synonymy or sublemma. The connections between modern and medieval terms, like a translation into modern English, will be mediated by the documentation corpus. As for modern scientific terms, we opt for an ontological connection. These types of connections will be exemplified with (mainly) plant names from our corpus. For example, a medieval term has a referent in the medieval ontology, structuring the botanic world as conceived by a "medieval brain" by giving the medieval classifications e.g. the primary qualities. This ontological entity is related to a referent of a modern scientific name, given that the documentation of the medieval term provides such information. We will argue that a clear separation of datasets (medieval and modern) allows for the diachronic study of the evolution of terminology and, more importantly for this context, paves the way for the analysis of the changes in the cognitive representation of what those terms actually refer to.
From canabo to Cannabis sativa L.: Modelling Diachronic Termino-ontological Resources in the Context of DiTMAO
Emiliano Giovannetti
2017
Abstract
The paper aims at contributing to the understanding of the Medieval Brain from a knowledge engineering perspective. As the brain is conceived as locus of cognition and knowledge in medieval medicine, we want to focus on the representation of medieval medico-botanical knowledge by means of a three-level text-termino-ontological resource. The resource is based on lemon (a model for the representation of lexica as RDF) and a set of ontologies represented in OWL and consists of (i) a medieval termino-ontological resource, (ii) a modern termino-ontological resource and (iii) a documentation corpus. It is developed and implemented within the DFG-funded project "Dictionnaire de Termes Médico-botaniques de l'Ancien Occitan" (DiTMAO). In an introductory part we will briefly introduce the aims of the project and the particularities of the corpus. The corpus consists of medical monographs in Latin script but also of so-called synonym lists in Hebrew script. These lists can be described as ancient multilingual dictionaries, in our case of Old Occitan, (Judaeo-)Arabic, Hebrew, Latin or other Romance languages and sometimes Greek and Aramaic, and they are of particular importance because the equivalent terms in other ancient languages help to determine the meaning of otherwise opaque Old Occitan terms. After introducing the three components of the resource, given some examples from our corpus, we elaborate, in the main part of paper, a solution to the problem of representing the relation between medieval medical terms or concepts and their ancient and modern correspondences. The problem concerns in particular the process of determining the terms´ meaning through the documentation of each term in corpus-external dictionaries and editions, and how this process can be represented in a comprehensive and transparent way. We propose to relate the terms of the medieval termino-ontological resource at a lexical level using relations such as synonymy or sublemma. The connections between modern and medieval terms, like a translation into modern English, will be mediated by the documentation corpus. As for modern scientific terms, we opt for an ontological connection. These types of connections will be exemplified with (mainly) plant names from our corpus. For example, a medieval term has a referent in the medieval ontology, structuring the botanic world as conceived by a "medieval brain" by giving the medieval classifications e.g. the primary qualities. This ontological entity is related to a referent of a modern scientific name, given that the documentation of the medieval term provides such information. We will argue that a clear separation of datasets (medieval and modern) allows for the diachronic study of the evolution of terminology and, more importantly for this context, paves the way for the analysis of the changes in the cognitive representation of what those terms actually refer to.I documenti in IRIS sono protetti da copyright e tutti i diritti sono riservati, salvo diversa indicazione.
