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Proposal for a standard ontology of Intertextuality

by Motti Benari et al.

Table of Contents and Executive Summary

Mapping intertextual relations

Apart from all the technological achievements, the CULTOS project has produced a remarkable accomplishment in the field of intertextuality research. We were able to portray and map all possible intertextual relations, (relations between texts), in a model flexible enough to overcome theoretical differences between academics in this field. We defined these relations, described their margins and organized them in a logical and coherent tree-like structural hierarchy. (This structural hierarchy is not an importance hierarchy).
We assume that the work is not complete and never to be completed. The more we work with it the more minor changes and additions might be required, yet we tend to believe that the current general model will hold.
This methodical study is a valuable tool for the construction of threads, by the CULTOS authoring tool, and at the same time it is a significant contribution to the research in the field of intertextuality.
Our work is partly based on Gerard Genette's definitions as elaborately described in "Ontology comparison - A report on CULTOS compared to other ontologies." (see Annex 1).

Outline

The Proposal for a standard ontology of Intertextuality describes in detail, the use of the Knowledge Model of Intertextual Studies ("The CULTOS Ontology") for the creation of intertextual threads.
The ontology is the basis for a multimedia authoring environment ("The CULTOS Tools") that allows the user to combine multimedia presentations with explicit domain-specific knowledge thus leading to hypertextual information spaces enhanced with ontological markup.

Chapter A describes the step by step building of an intertextual thread - from the idea and the using of entities to the linking to concepts and relations from the ontology. The user gets guidance about different types of concepts and the best ways to choose the appropriate ones.

Chapter B, the "CULTOS Ontology of Relations" includes more than 300 relations defined using the knowledge builder (k-infinity, an ontology building tool provided by one of the partners). Each relation is presented with a Description, its position within the hierarchy of relations and examples for the relation.

Chapter C, the "Glossary of terms from the concepts hierarchy" is a partial description of the defined concepts. It comprises 3 types of terms.

1. The most important terms used during Thread building.
2. New terms or terms with a new specific meaning.
3. Some examples aimed to demonstrate the way we would have to define all terms in a comprehensive glossary. These definitions are often based on external sources. Other terms, not new or not particularly important, do not appear in the glossary as a rule.

Annex 1 describes terminological interconnections with Gerard Genette's model of intertextuality

Annex 2 presents some screenshots of glossary integration in CULTOS Tools.

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