Interaction specifications as contexts for ontologies

Abstract

Common formalisms to represent knowledge, such as Description Logics, are insufficient to represent the dynamic aspects of language when it is used in communication. However, this information can be helpful to describe the semantics of terms in interactions, and in particular to obtain useful alignments that can be used as translations between heterogeneous interlocutors. We propose to consider the specification of interactions as contexts for ontologies. To this aim, the ontology language needs to be extended with a temporal layer that allows to express properties about the possible message exchanges between agents in an interaction. We present a simple preliminary extension for taxonomies, and discuss directions to investigate.