OnLiT: An Ontology for Linguistic Terminology

Understanding the differences underlying the scope, usage and content of language data requires the provision of a clarifying terminological basis which is integrated in the metadata describing a particular language resource. While terminological resources such as the SIL Glossary of Linguistic Terms, ISOcat or the GOLD ontology provide a considerable amount of linguistic terms, their practical usage is limited to a look up of a defined term whose relation to other terms is unspecified or insufficient. Therefore, in this paper we propose an ontology for linguistic terminology, called OnLiT. It is a data model which can be used to represent linguistic terms and concepts in a semantically interrelated data structure and, thus, overcomes prevalent isolating definition-based term descriptions. OnLiT is based on the LiDo Glossary of Linguistic Terms and enables the creation of RDF datasets, that represent linguistic terms and their meanings within the whole or a subdomain of linguistics.