Gellish English dictionary

The Gellish English Dictionary-Taxonomy is an example of an open-source “smart” electronic dictionary, which concepts are arranged in a subtype-supertype hierarchy, thus forming a taxonomy. The dictionary-taxonomy is a machine readable. Apart from the fact that it is an English (business-technical) dictionary it also defines the semantics of Gellish English, which is a computer interpretable structured subset of the natural English language. The dictionary-taxonomy differs from conventional dictionaries because of several additional capabilities. Therefore it is called "smart". This means that it satisfies the following criteria:

• It contains definitions per concept, whereas ordinary dictionaries usually provide multiple different definitions of a single term, whereas it is unclear whether those definitions are alternative definitions of the same concept or whether they are definitions of different concepts. Thus a smart dictionary explicitly distinguished homonyms (the same term for different concepts) and explicitly specifies which terms are used as true synonyms, including also abbreviations, codes, etc.
• It is completely arranged as a taxonomy, which is a subtype-supertype hierarchy of concepts. This means that each concept is defined as an explicit subtype of one or more supertype concepts by specialization relations (A is a specialization of B and B is a specialization of C, etc.).
• It includes also concepts with multi-term names. For example: line shaft centrifugal pump. Ordinary dictionaries will only define the separate terms, from which it cannot always be inferred what the multi-term means.
• It defines kinds of relations, also called relation types or fact types, being special kinds of concepts. The relation types include kinds that are specific for the expression of facts that represent knowledge, requirements, definitions and information about individual things. The relation types have names and synonyms that consist of standardized phrases. For example: the phrase 'is a part of' is a standard phrase for a relation type that can be used to express a fact such as A is a part of B. Another standard phrase is 'can have as part a', which phrase can be used to express knowledge that a whole of a particular kind can have as a part a component of a particular kind. For example, the fact that a pump can have a bearing is expressed in Gellish English as:
  a pump can have as part a bearing. Such fact types do not appear in ordinary dictionaries, because they are word based and do not recognize standard phrases. However, fact types represent semantic concepts that are used by everybody to make sentences. Because these relation types are standardized and unambiguously defined, Gellish English becomes computer interpretable.
  • Note: All three elements in the above expression are names of standard English concepts that are defined in the Gellish English Dictionary-Taxonomy.
• It includes explicit relations between concepts, using the above mentioned standardized relation types. Those relations express knowledge about the concepts. This makes that the dictionary-taxonomy is also called an ontology. If a user of an application system classifies an individual object by a concept in the dictionary-taxonomy, then a computer system can infer that the knowledge and requirements about the concept are applicable to that individual object and it can make that information available to that user. This includes also the knowledge and requirements that are available about the supertypes of that concepts, because such knowledge and requirements are inherited by the subtype of those supertype concepts, conform the subtype-supertype hierarchy (the taxonomy).
• It enables automatic translation and search in databases in other languages. This is enabled, because each concept is represented by a language independent unique identifier (UID, a natural number), whereas multiple terms (names) in various languages are allowed to denote the same concept. This enables that facts that are expressed in one language can be automatically presented by a computer in any other language for which a smart dictionary is available. It also enables that queries in one language can be answered by database systems that contain facts that are expressed other languages, whereas the results can be presented in the language in which the query was formulated.
• It can be extended by private and proprietary concepts and terms. For example, company specific codes and proprietary knowledge can be added when required. Guidelines for the 'proper definition of a concept' are provided in the documentation.
• It is computer interpretable and system independent.

The Gellish English Dictionary-Taxonomy is available as a collection of standardized Gellish Data Tables. Each of those tables has the same standard column definitions. Thus the whole dictionary-taxonomy can be treated as if it was one table. The Gellish English Dictionary is freely available under open-source conditions (through one of the open source licenses) via the SourceForge Web site. Further documentation is available on the Gellish official website.