Ontology learning by analyzing XML document structure and content

Abstract

Most existing methods for ontology learning from textual documents rely on natural language analysis. We extend these approaches by taking into account the document structure which bears additional knowledge. The documents that we deal with are XML specifications of databases. In addition to classical linguistic clues, the structural organization of such documents also contributes to convey meaning. In a first stage, we characterize the semantics of XML mark-up and of their relations. Then parsing rules are defined to exploit the XML structure of documents and to create ontology concepts and semantic relations. These rules make it possible to automatically learn a kernel of ontology from documents. In a second stage; this ontology is enriched with the results of text analysis by lexico-syntactic patterns. Both ontology learning rules and patterns are implemented in the Gate platform.