1. Indexing concepts and/or named entities Pino Buizza 11 th International ISKO conference Roma, 23-26.2.2010

2. Pino Buizza. Indexing concepts and/or named entities2 Roma, 23.2.2010 Indexing concepts or named entities Morphologic aspects Concept and named entity Named entity & proper name Meaning of proper names Semantic linguistics Indexing languages Beyond indexing languages

3. Pino Buizza. Indexing concepts and/or named entities3 Roma, 23.2.2010 Morphologic aspects Principles underlying subject heading languages (SHLs) each concept or named entity... be represented by one authorized heading names of persons, places, families, corporate bodies and works... according to the rules used for author and title entries But: names incorporated in a phrase? Romantic drama – Influence by Shakespeare, William Romantic drama – Influence by William Shakespeare But: entities not covered by cataloguing rules Alexander the Great Venus de Milo

4. Pino Buizza. Indexing concepts and/or named entities4 Roma, 23.2.2010 Concept and named entity Concept: a unit of thought. Concepts exist in the mind as abstract entities independent of terms used to express them (ISO-CD 25963) Named entity: unique entities identified by a proper name Which are the differences?

5. Pino Buizza. Indexing concepts and/or named entities5 Roma, 23.2.2010 Concept and unique entity Idea plane a class, with shared characteristics an individual in the class, with its own characteristics Verbal plane – natural language common nouns determiners, definite descriptions, proper names Verbal plane – controlled vocabulary terms from subject heading list or thesaurus a priori relationships between concepts uniform headings equivalence relationship between different forms

6. Pino Buizza. Indexing concepts and/or named entities6 Roma, 23.2.2010 Named entity & proper name In association with a common noun Hurricane Charlie Earthquake – Haiti – 2010, Jan. 12 not unique entities considered a single entity Automobile Citroên 2cv Leontopodium Alpinum (or Edelweiss) Christmas types of material or of uncountable products Chianti wine

7. Pino Buizza. Indexing concepts and/or named entities7 Roma, 23.2.2010 Proper names Philosophy of language meaninglessness only a reference, denotation, extension=1 from an initial baptismal act meaningfullness Sinn (sense) shortened description categorical presupposition grammatical meaning intension/extension is only one aspect

8. Pino Buizza. Indexing concepts and/or named entities8 Roma, 23.2.2010 Semantic linguistics Grammatical meaning Use meaning Lemma/name Categorial meaning level of application assigned / derived meaning......

9. Pino Buizza. Indexing concepts and/or named entities9 Roma, 23.2.2010 Semantic linguistics In common nouns the meaning determines the denotatum In proper names the meaning helps to retrieve an already given denotatum Proper names no asserted lexical meaning presuppositional and asserted meaning categorical meaning – linguistic convention associative meaning – language use emotive meaning grammatical meaning a mental referent

10. Pino Buizza. Indexing concepts and/or named entities10 Roma, 23.2.2010 Proper name, a definition A proper name is a noun that denotes a unique entity at the level of established linguistic convention to make it psychosocially salient within a given basic level category [pragmatic]. The meaning of a name, if any, does not (or not any longer) determine its denotation [semantic]... (Willy Van Langendonck, Theory and typology of proper names)

11. Pino Buizza. Indexing concepts and/or named entities11 Roma, 23.2.2010 Definition / description ConceptUnique entity related concepts independent descriptions a net of meaning infinite description abstraction instance instantiable not instantiable divisible not divisible...... A proper name for a unique entity lacks the features of a common noun or noun phrase for a concept

12. Pino Buizza. Indexing concepts and/or named entities12 Roma, 23.2.2010 Indexing languages Concepts, connected with a priori relationships thesaurus without Named Entities Named entities, isolated without semantic relationships with instance relationship(s) exposed to different assertions

13. Pino Buizza. Indexing concepts and/or named entities13 Roma, 23.2.2010 Instance relationship Categorical relationship, independent from circumstances and documents Men / women? Nationality? Profession? Architects, Painters, Sculptors...? Polyhierarchy? Bruni, CarlaBTIModels Bruni, CarlaBTI First ladies

14. Pino Buizza. Indexing concepts and/or named entities14 Roma, 23.2.2010 Instance as syntactical relationship The most specific concept instantianted plus Named Entity, (term plus proper name) Architects: Bernini, Gian Lorenzo Sculptors: Bernini, Gian Lorenzo Actors: Regan, Ronald USA Presidents: Regan, Ronald (GRIS, Guida allindicizzazione per soggetto)

15. Pino Buizza. Indexing concepts and/or named entities15 Roma, 23.2.2010 Classification No individual is a class (logically exclusive) exception, due to literary warrant, not a logical reason: William Shakespeare in DDC Every individual is in a class, or, in more than one class disciplinary dispersion, like any concept interdisciplinary number for typical categories In a class with a proper number UDC: class number + proper name

16. Pino Buizza. Indexing concepts and/or named entities16 Roma, 23.2.2010 Bottom term / class of one Proper names of NE are bottom terms divided only by their parts/properties qualified by syntactic relationships with other concepts or NE Named entities are classes of one no class is a-tomic, sub-classes with other facets

17. Pino Buizza. Indexing concepts and/or named entities17 Roma, 23.2.2010 Beyond indexing languages Proper name in catalogue: mere denotation, with referent in the real world, meaningless Proper name in indexing: categorical meaning, with a mental referent Proper name in full text searching (NER) = propial lemma metaphora, metonymy, antonomasia, autonymy... different referents

18. Pino Buizza. Indexing concepts and/or named entities18 Roma, 23.2.2010 Thank you !