In the following discussion we define as ‘super-ordinate’ a concept at the focus of interest, and denote it C’. Equation (3) is a set-theoretic definition of the super-ordinate concept C’ in terms of its three building blocks, each containing a specific type of features/descriptors; this equation can be used as a generic format of Concept Parsing Algorithms (CPA) that guide the unpacking of C’ into its component parts:
The meaning of a lexical label of a super-ordinate concept C’ in a sublanguage with controlled vocabulary is encoded in a set that contains three building blocks (Shafrir & Etkind, 2005; 2006); these are the sets:
[Ci] = set of co-occurring sub-ordinate concepts [C1, C2, …, Cm]
[Rj] = set of relations [R1, R2, …, Rn]
[Lk] = set of linguistic elements (descriptors) [L1, L2, …, Lp]
Sets [Ci], [Rj] and [Lk] in Equation (3) can be characterized by the following (non-exhaustive) list of descriptors:
Set [Ci] of Co-occurring Concepts:
The set must contain at least two co-occurring concepts (i >= 2; cannot be an empty set)
Each concept has a unique lexical label which acts as a proper name; no synonyms are allowed
Each concept occurs unconditionally
Co-occurring concepts are unranked
No metric is available for comparing co-occurring concepts
Set [Rj] of Relations:
The set may be empty (j =0)
A relation does not have a unique lexical label and may accept synonyms
A relation may be between co-occurring concepts, or between co-occurring concepts and the super-ordinal concept
A relation between two concepts is unconditional
Relations are unranked
No metric is available for comparing relations
Set [Lk] of Linguistic Elements:
The set may not be empty (k >=1)
Linguistic elements must obey syntactic, morphological, and grammatical rules of the language