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The CULTOS Ontology - Knowledge Model of Intertextual Studies

by Motti Benari, Ziva Ben Porat and Wernher Behrendt

Table of Contents and Executive Summary

This document describes in detail, the Knowledge Model of Intertextual Studies (synonymously referred to as "The CULTOS Ontology") which will be the basis for a multimedia authoring environment that allows the user to combine multimedia presentations with explicit domain-specific knowledge thus leading to hypertextual information spaces enhanced with ontological markup.

This report must be seen in conjunction with two further deliverables that are planned for months 8 and 19, respectively: The current "paper model" will be fully developed as a "machine model" that will be the terminological basis for the authoring tools in CULTOS. In the course of the validation process, this implemented knowledge model will be refined, revised, and extended to arrive at a major expected result: a proposal for a standard ontology of intertextual studies. To summarize, a detailed model of Intertextual Studies has been developed, including a controlled (and controllable) vocabulary of terms for ontological markup.

The model has in part, been implemented using an existing knowledge editing tool. Thus, it was possible to link already at this stage, the ontology with the multimedia authoring tools. We were thus able to validate that it is feasible to build a knowledge-enhanced multimedia authoring tool for the domain of Arts and Literature, and for the support of presenting intertextual cultural threads in novel, interesting and meaningful ways.

1 APPROACHES TO KNOWLEDGE AUTHORING

Chapter One explains first, the theoretical background of Intertextual Studies, in order to give readers from non-Humanities backgrounds an understanding of the application domain and an appreciation of the depth and width of topics and viewpoints. Also included is a critical appraisal of Hypertext-based content collections with intertextual themes, that have been built or proposed over the past sixty years, from Vannevar Bush to George Landow. The second half of the chapter gives a summary of the technical background for Knowledge Representation, including relevant issues from Cognitive Science, Semiotics, and Artificial Intelligence, aimed at readers from non-computing backgrounds.

1.1 TRADITIONAL APPROACH TO INTERTEXTUAL STUDIE
1.2 HYPERTEXT-BASED APPROACH TO INTERTEXTUAL STUDIES
1.3 KNOWLEDGE-BASED MULTIMEDIA AUTHORING
1.4 ONTOLOGY, ONTOLOGIES, AND ONTOLOGY BUILDING
1.5 WHAT IS A KNOWLEDGE REPRESENTATION LANGUAGE?
1.6 NOTATIONAL VARIATIONS OF TYPED LOGIC

2 ACTUAL MODELLING - ORGANISATION AND PRINCIPLES

Chapter Two explains the approach that we took in order to organise the modelling, starting with an acceptable baseline for all five user groups, and moving to a model with sufficient scope to satisfy the needs of the different user groups (all within the domain of intertextual studies).

2.1 THE MODELLING STAGES
2.2 KNOWLEDGE EDITING TOOLS
2.3 KNOWLEDGE REPRESENTATION IN K-INFINITY
2.4 TRADE-OFFS BETWEEN TOOL CONSTRAINTS AND MODELLING PRINCIPLES

3 THE CULTOS ONTOLOGY

Chapter Three contains the detailed model of Intertextual Relations, including a meta model to relate intertextual terms with terms from "adjacent" fields, following in part, the model proposed by Genette, and adding relevant concepts where needed.

3.1 THE CULTOS UPPER ONTOLOGY
3.2 MIDDLE ONTOLOGY (META MODEL)
3.3 LOWER ONTOLOGY (INTERTEXTUAL CONCEPTS AND RELATIONS)

4 SCOPE, COMPLETENESS AND USEFULNESS OF THE ONTOLOGY

Chapter Four describes our initial findings with respect to scope, completeness and usability of the ontology. This contrasts the top-down modelling by the lead group, with the bottom -up approach (through the construction of actual, representative intertextual threads), employed by the other members of the content group.

4.1 METHODOLOGY AS ENVISAGED - STANDARD, EXTENDED AND MODIFIED ONTOLOGY
4.2 METHODOLOGY AT WORK

5 CONCLUSIONS AND FURTHER WORK

Chapter Five summarises the findings after the initial modelling stage. One conclusion is that on the one hand, we can indeed build a very comprehensive, tangible model of intertextual studies, that is even stable in most aspects, but on the other hand, the domain cannot - more or less by definition of its agenda - be described by a finite model. Therefore, one of the interesting and technically challenging themes for further research will be to combine the stability of the existing ontology with possibilities for evolution by other experts working in subfields that require a more sophisticated vocabulary of ontological terms, than is proposed to date. Other conclusions come from re-assessing some of the risks anticipated at beginning of the project, in the light of the findings gleaned from developing the ontology. Finally, we tentatively, set our work in relationship with major approaches to "upper ontologies", by investigating a model proposed by Sowa, as well as a possible connection with situation semantics.

5.1 STABLE VS DYNAMIC ONTOLOGY
5.2 ONTOLOGY OF INTERTEXTUALITY - RISKS REVISITED
5.3 RELATIONSHIP OF CULTOS KNOWLEDGE MODEL WITH OTHER UPPER ONTOLOGIES
5.4 OUTLOOK ON PLANNED WORK

6 REFERENCES

6.1 INTERTEXTUAL THEORY AND HYPERTEXT
6.2 KNOWLEDGE REPRESENTATION AND COMPUTING
6.3 INTERTEXTUAL THREADS - PRIMARY AND SECONDARY LITERATURE