Images and Ontology



Consider the word "Peace". We wish to ontologize it. In particular we will limit ourselves "formally linguistically" to OWL-DL But we also want to enrich the categorization by reference to, among other things, a small selection of images.

Let us begin with a simple example:

The concept to be illustrated is Ambiguity. There are two images (a before image and an after image):





7 Types of Ambiguity

In his book Ambiguity of Play, Brian Sutton-Smith gives precise examples of 7 types of ambiguity (of play):

1 Ambiguity of Reference

"Is that a pretend gun, or are you choking?"

This seems to be an example of ambiguity of sound. One can imagine hearing some sound and without any further sensory input (such as sight) one can be confused whether or not the player is pretending to shoot with a gun or is actually choking to death (for example).

Let us imagine using the first image above and labelling it to give some sort of direction to the meaning of Ambiguity:


устни на жена

Here the labelling itself is deliberately ambiguous. To complete the picture, the second image is also labelled:


цвят на жена

The alternative labelling considered was, of course, цвете на жена. But the intrinsic ambiguity of цвят itself was greatly to be preferred.

2 Ambiguity of Referent

"Is that an object or a toy?"

3 Ambiguity of Intent

"Do you mean it, or is it pretend?"

4 Ambiguity of Sense

"Is this serious, or is it nonsense?"

The example we recommend is Lewis Carroll's poem Jabberwocky. Lewis Carroll also points another obvious ambiguity.

5 Ambiguity of Transition

"You said you were only pretending."

6 Ambiguity of Contradiction

"A man playing at being a woman."

7 Ambiguity of Meaning

"Is it play or playfighting?"

Sutton-Smith refers to the Seven Types of Ambiguity by William Empson.

Posted: Mon - May 8, 2006 at 07:39 a.m.          

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