Semiotic-Based Prototypicality Gradient

Inspired by works in Cognitive Psychology, this paper advocates the definition of a specific process dedicated to Ontology Personalization. Practically, this process consists in decorating the Specialisation/Generalisation links (i.e. the is-a links) of the hierarchy of concepts with 2 gradients. The goal of the first gradient, called Conceptual Prototypicality Gradient, is to capture the user-sensitive degree of truth of the categorisation process, that is the one which is perceived by the end-user. As this gradient is defined according to the three aspects of the semiotic triangle (i.e. intentional, extensional and expressional dimension), we call it Semiotic-based Prototypicality Gradient. The objective of the second gradient, called Lexical Prototypicality Gradient, is to capture the user-sensitive degree of truth of the lexicalisation process, i.e. the definition of a set of terms used to denote a concept. These gradients aim at representing the multiple points of view that can be associated to the same ontology. They enrich the initial formal semantics of an ontology by adding a pragmatics defined according to a context of use which depends on parameters like culture, educational background or emotional context.