Conceptual Modeling The Linguistic Approach

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Conceptual Modeling: the Linguistic Approach
Article · January 2009

DOI: 10.22456/2175-2745.12583
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Lucia Castro Fernanda Araujo Baião

Universidade Federal do Estado do Rio de Janeiro (UNIRIO) Pontifícia Universidade Católica do Rio de Janeiro
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Giancarlo Guizzardi
University of Twente
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Lucia Castro1
Fernanda Araujo Baião 1
Giancarlo Guizzardi 2
Abstract: After more than thirty years of its first introduction, conceptual modeling
remains an important research field, which has been recently addressed by the literature
on semantic interoperability in its various forms (model integration, service
interoperability, knowledge harmonization, taxonomy alignment), domain engineering
and the creation of conceptual models through Natural Language Processing (NLP), to
name a few. In the database conceptual design, the designer must learn the language used
in the Universe of Discourse (UoD) to be modeled, along with its underlying concepts,
and then represent such concepts in a modeling language. Thus, the conceptual modeling
process can be seen as a translation. For the resulting model to be both detailed and
unambiguous, the designer must represent the UoD in a generative language which
constructs can convey the same concepts represented in the respective natural language.
For the whole process to be effective, we argue that the adoption of modeling languages
and methodologies that are based on well-founded ontological theories is required. We
propose the use of a linguistic approach for conceptual modeling from natural language
texts, and illustrate how it may be applied using the well-founded modeling language
OntoUML.
1 Conceptual Modeling
Batini et al. [1] state that the conceptual design “starts from the specification of
requirements and results in the conceptual schema of the database” and “is by far the most
critical phase of database design and further development of database technology is not likely
to change this situation”, that it is an activity that cannot be very much helped by automatic
tools.” that “the designer has full responsibility for the process of understanding and
transforming requirements into conceptual schemas”. According to these statements, the
conceptual modeling process is a subjective, time consuming activity that relies on the
experience of a professional rather than in a prescriptive methodology.
1 NP2Tec/UNIRIO, Rio de Janeiro, Brazil

{lucia.castro, fernanda.baiao}@uniriotec.br
2 NEMO/UFES, Espírito Santo, Brazil
{[email protected]}
In order to make conceptual modeling a more objective process, Chen [2] enunciated
eleven rules for the translation of data requirements from a natural language (in this case
English) to an ER model. Based on such rules, many projects have proposed tools and
heuristics to automate the modeling activity. Examples can be found in [3] and [4].
2 The Linguistic Approach

The projects mentioned above work from the perspective of the meta-model structure;
they turn to linguistics to try and establish rules as to what natural language construct should
be mapped to which representation language construct. Although linguistics has a supportive
role, such works tend to overlook semantic and syntactic details that are present in the natural
language data requirement representation but that cannot be equally represented in the
conceptual model. As so, representations tend to not be well evaluated in terms of correctness
and completeness.
The first mapping rule presented by Chen [2], states, for instance, that “A common
noun in English corresponds to an entity type in an ER diagram”. Although one can relate to
this rule in a very natural way (after all, “employee” and “vehicle”, for instance, are indeed
common nouns), words like “date”, “water”, “red” and “size”, to name a few, are also
common nouns – should they all be represented as entities? From a linguistic perspective such
subtleties become more evident, as does the need for a well-founded ontological language to
represent them. From the linguistic perspective, accurate and complete conceptual data models
must be represented in an ontological, generative language, in such a way that the reading of
the model can be the same as that of the natural language represented requirements.
Using the same words of the example above, a well-founded ontological language as
OntoUML [5] differentiates “employee” from “water”, for instance. The first common noun
represents a kind, i.e., the construct that corresponds to concrete common nouns, a concept
composed and identified by its characteristics. The second would be represented by a quantity,
that inheres the idea of a mass (or uncountable) noun.
References
1. Batini, C., Ceri, S., Navathe, S., 1992. Conceptual Database Design, Benjamin/Cummings.
2. Chen, P., 1983. English Sentence Structure and Entity-Relationship Diagrams, Elsevier
Science Publishing
3. Overmyer, S., Lavoie, B., Rambow, O., 2001. Conceptual Modeling through Linguistic
Analysis Using LIDA, 23rd International Conference on Software Engineering.
4. Hartmann, S., Link, S., 2007. English Structures and EER Modeling, Fourth Asia-Pacific
Conference on Conceptual Modeling.
5. Guizzardi, G., 2005. Ontological Foundations for Structural Conceptual Models, Telematica
Instituut Fundamental Research Series 15, Universal Press.
104 RITA • Volume XVI • Número 2 • 2009
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See discussions, stats, and author profiles for this publication at: https://www.researchgate.

Conceptual Modeling: the Linguistic Approach

Article · January 2009

Lucia Castro Fernanda Araujo Baião

SEE PROFILE SEE PROFILE

Ontologies in the Public Domain View project

Knowledge Modeling and Reasoning (Representação de Conhecimento e Raciocínio) View project

The user has requested enhancement of the downloaded file.

Fernanda Araujo Baião 1

1 NP2Tec/UNIRIO, Rio de Janeiro, Brazil

2 The Linguistic Approach

104 RITA • Volume XVI • Número 2 • 2009

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