Concept Parsing Algorithms (CPA)

Issues, Controversies, Problems

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:

• 1.

  The set must contain at least two co-occurring concepts (i >= 2; cannot be an empty set)

• 2.

  Each concept has a unique lexical label which acts as a proper name; no synonyms are allowed

• 3.

  Each concept occurs unconditionally

• 4.

  Co-occurring concepts are unranked

• 5.

  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