OntoTimeFL-a formalism for temporal annotation and reasoning for natural language text

Abstract

This work has been developed with the motivation of defining a formalism (OntoTimeFL) for annotating complex events in natural language texts and applying, to the items annotated, several types of axioms and rules for temporal reasoning. In part, OntoTimeFL is a conceptualization of TimeML formalism, where the basic concepts of annotation by an ontological form have been represented. TimeML entities have been analyzed to extract the concepts hidden in the formalism and such concepts have been defined as classes of a formal ontology. In addition, OntoTimeFL introduces new constructs (concepts) for the annotation that mainly concern three complex events: narrative, intentional, and causal. The definition of OntoTimeFL through a formal ontology is a methodological choice made in order to facilitate the automatic annotation processes, to reuse the existing axiomatics in the research of temporal reasoning, and to facilitate the creation of new ones (in particular an application of causal reasoning will be shown).