The Idea of Concept Systems

An involuntary hiatus has prevented me from the pleasure of blogging on definitions for about a month.  I am now gradually getting back to normal, and am able to blog again.

Today I want to look at concept systems, and types of concept system.

In data modeling, only one type of concept system commonly appears - the generic concept system, containing Supertypes and Subtypes.  Very occasionally, the part-whole type of concept system can also be found.  The latter be seen in "bill of material" structures.  Strangely, the visual representation of a generic concept system and a part-whole concept system can look very similar in a data model.   I think that this leads data modelers to play down the idea of concept systems, and indeed the term "concept system" is not really met with in data modeling.

However, if we turn to the discipline of terminology, the idea of concept system is very prominent, and different types of concept systems are called out.  Let me quote from the Nordterm Guide to Terminology by Heidi Suonuuti (ISBN 952-9794-14-2):

"Concepts are not independent phenomena.  They are always related to other concepts in one way or another, and form concept systems which can vary from fairly simple to extremely complicated.  In terminology work, an analysis of the relations among concepts and an arrangement of them into concept systems, is a prerequisite for the successful drafting of definitions."

It is interesting that from the data modeler's perspective, concept systems are viewed only with respect to designing data storage solutions.  A terminologist, by contrast, is more interested in business information and how concepts are related within it - irrespective of how such information might be stored as data.

This makes me wonder about semantic modelers.  We hear a lot about semantics these days, and there is no doubt that semantics involves identifying concepts and providing definitions for them.  But finding the relationships between the concepts must be done prior to forming the definitions.  This is because a definition, in part, describes a concept's relations to other concepts in the concept system in which it is found.  So what good methodologies, notations, and techniques exist for describing or visualizing concept systems?  I am not sure we have yet got any good ones.   The danger is that we then fall back on the data modeling methodologies, notations, and techniques, which fail to capture significant semantic details.

But perhaps more important is that the terminologists have the idea of types of concept systems.  The generic and partitive types of concept system are the major ones, but there are others.  We will deal with the different types in a future post.

George Orwell on The Advantages of Abbreviation

The issue of the emotive power of terms and definitions is a difficult one.  However, it is never far away, even in data management.  With the recent passing of Kim Jong Il, it seems appropriate to reflect on the political application of terminology.  Below is an excerpt taken from George Orwell's novel "1984" which can be found at the Newspeak Dictionary site www.newspeakdictionary.com.  It deals with how abbreviations can be constructed to achieve certain ends. Admittedly, these are terminological rather than definitional principles, but they are not without interest and certainly have their place. 

So far as it could be contrived, everything that had or might have political significance of any kind was fitted into the B vocabulary. The name of every organization, or body of people, or doctrine, or country, or institution, or public building, was invariably cut down into the familiar shape; that is, a single easily pronounced word with the smallest number of syllables that would preserve the original derivation. In the Ministry of Truth, for example, the Records Department, in which Winston Smith worked, was called Recdep, the Fiction Department was called Ficdep, the Teleprogrammes Department was called Teledep, and so on. This was not done solely with the object of saving time. Even in the early decades of the twentieth century, telescoped words and phrases had been one of the characteristic features of political language; and it had been noticed that the tendency to use abbreviations of this kind was most marked in totalitarian countries and totalitarian organizations. Examples were such words as Nazi, Gestapo, Comintern, Inprecorr, Agitprop. In the beginning the practice had been adopted as it were instinctively, but in Newspeak it was used with a conscious purpose. It was perceived that in thus abbreviating a name one narrowed and subtly altered its meaning, by cutting out most of the associations that would otherwise cling to it.

The words Communist International, for instance, call up a composite picture of universal human brotherhood, red flags, barricades, Karl Marx, and the Paris Commune. The word Comintern, on the other hand, suggests merely a tightly-knit organization and a well-defined body of doctrine. It refers to something almost as easily recognized, and as limited in purpose, as a chair or a table. Comintern is a word that can be uttered almost without taking thought, whereas Communist International is a phrase over which one is obliged to linger at least momentarily. In the same way, the associations called up by a word like Minitrue are fewer and more controllable than those called up by Ministry of Truth. This accounted not only for the habit of abbreviating whenever possible, but also for the almost exaggerated care that was taken to make every word easily pronounceable.

In Newspeak, euphony outweighed every consideration other than exactitude of meaning. Regularity of grammar was always sacrificed to it when it seemed necessary. And rightly so, since what was required, above all for political purposes, was short clipped words of unmistakable meaning which could be uttered rapidly and which roused the minimum of echoes in the speaker's mind. 

When it comes to Newspeak, my favorite word is Prolefeed, which is defined as Rubbishy "entertainment" and spurious news which The Party hands out to the masses.  But I'm going to have to cut this post short tonight - it's time for Dancing With The Stars.

An Outline of ISO 704:2009 - Terminology Work - Principles and Methods

ISO 704 is a standard that has a good deal of relevance for anyone interested in definitions.  I am providing an outline of it here, so its scope can be appreciated.  Substantive discussion of the content of the standard will be provided in future posts.  

The standard has been produced by ISO Technical Committee (TC) 37, which is called "Terminology and other language and content resources".  Actually the standard has been produced by Subcommittee SC1 of TC 37, which is known as "Principles and Methods".  ISO 704 existed in a previous version, that was published in 2000. 

The present version of the standard is 74 pages long and can be obtained from http://www.iso.org.

The abstract of the standard states:

ISO 704:2009 establishes the basic principles and methods for preparing and compiling terminologies both inside and outside the framework of standardization, and describes the links between objects, concepts, and their terminological representations. It also establishes general principles governing the formation of designations and the formulation of definitions. Full and complete understanding of these principles requires some background knowledge of terminology work. The principles are general in nature and this document is applicable to terminology work in scientific, technological, industrial, administrative and other fields of knowledge.

ISO 704:2009 does not stipulate procedures for the layout of international terminology standards, which are treated in ISO 10241. 

The standard begins with an overview.  This goes straight into the subject matter, and does not provide any philosophical or logical background.  Notation used in the standard is introduced.

The next major section is "Terms and Definitions". It is rather brief, but has several points of interest.  It is followed by a section on Concepts.  What concepts are is discussed, along with "general concepts" and "individual concepts".  Characteristics of concepts are then reviewed, and their importance highlighted - especially for terminological work.  An example of terminological analysis is presented, where a computer mouse is discussed.  Different classes of characteristics are outlined.  The next subsection within "Concepts" is about "Concept Relations".  This subsection is particularly important as it describes different types of concept systems.  It is quite a long subsection, and will be of interest to both data modelers and ontologists.

The next section is on definitions.  After a discussion of intensional definitions, a treatment of definitional writing is provided.  There is a good deal of detail in this long subsection.  It is followed by a subsection on "Supplementary information to the definition", essentially metadata for the definition.  Deficient definitions are discussed next.

The next section is on "designations".  These appear to be identical to logical signs - the things that signify concepts.  A number of very interesting points are discussed.  Obviously, this area is very close to terminology, but still has a lot of relevance to definitions.  Towards the end of the section, the "formation of terms and appellations" is discussed.  This might be of interest to data modelers, who often engage in debates about "naming conventions".

An annex is next, dealing with "Other types of definitions" - that is, other than the intensional type of definition, which was dealt with in the main body.  Here we get some of the usual suspects in the ontology of definitions.

A second annex deals with "Examples of term-formation methods".  As might be expected this is concerned with creating terms. 

The final annex is "Categories of appellations".  Although not claiming to be a classification, a list of major types of appellation is provided, and each is discussed in detail.  Again, this is closer to pure terminology than definitions, but is of considerable interest.

A Brief Review of Nordterm 8 - A Guide to Terminology

In the sparse literature about definitions, most publications are from Academia.  However, Nordterm 8 Guide to Terminology by Heidi Suonuuti (ISBN 952-9794-14-2) is a very useful and practical booklet from a practicioner community.  Further details can be found at

http://www.nordterm.net/info/Publ/PNORDTERM8-en.html.

Nordterm describes itself as follows: "Nordterm is an association of organisations and societies in the Nordic countries which are engaged in terminology work, training and research.".  Terminology work, of course, covers much more than definitions, but A Guide to Terminology does contain a fair amount on definitions, and has a very practical focus.

Nordterm 8 contains a very useful set of references, particularly about ISO Standards.  It introduces definitions in a section on Concept Analysis, that is also valuable as an overview of ontology - again from a practical perspective. A section dedicated to definitions follows, with systematization in terminology work as a special focus.  A valuable high level methodology for terminology work is presented next - again very practical.  Deficient definitions are examined next.  The following major section is on terms.  This, of course, is a specialist topic within terminology, but obviously closely allied to definition work.  Finally, there is a summary of the terms used in terminology work (alas without definitions) and their translations in Nordic languages.  The whole booklet is 42 pages.

A Guide to Terminology would be valuable just because there is so little literature, and Academia seems to have a mission to avoid any practical contributions.  However, the booklet packs a lot into a small volume and is highly informative and will be a help to any practicioner.