the study of thesaural relationships from a semantic point of view

thesaurus is one, out of many, precious tool in information technology by which information specialists can optimize storage and retrieval of documents in scientific databases and on the web. in recent years, there has been a shift from thesaurus to ontology by downgrading thesaurus in favor of ontology. it is because thesaurus cannot meet the needs of information management because it cannot create a rich knowledge-based description of documents. it is claimed that the thesaural relationships are restricted and insufficient. the writers in this paper show that thesaural relationships are not inadequate and restricted as they are said to be but quite the opposite they cover all semantic relations and can increase the possibility of successful storage and retrieval of documents. this study shows that thesauri are semantically optimal and they cover all lexical relations; therefore, thesauri can continue as suitable tools for knowledge management.