Roles: One Dead Armadillo on WordNet's Speedway to Ontology

We assume that the ontological structure of the common-sense world, and thus of human knowledge about this world, is organized in networks rather than in hierarchies. Thus, using the taxonomies that semantic relations generate in WordNet as the only source for the reconstruction of ontological information must fail at some point. Comparing the ontological structures underlying roles to WordNet representations, we demonstrate that the power of lexical semantics to abstract over contexts distorts the taxonomic order of a conceivable ontology. Approaches trying to adjust the semantics of WordNet relations, in order to reach a higher ontological adequacy, unintentionally produce artifacts deriving from differences between the frequency of contexts, and from metonymy-like reference to ontological relations.