AGROVOC has been found to contain relationships that are incorrectly assigned, as indicated in 2.1, and too broadly defined, as shown in 2.2.
A review of the data in AGROVOC reveals that some USE/UF and BT/NT relationships are incorrect or reflect inconsistent uses of the relationships. The USE/UF relationship may link synonyms and their formal variants but also quasi-synonyms such as closely related and hierarchically related terms (Soergel et al. 2004). Likewise, the BT/NT relationship is very ambiguous (see examples in Table 1).
Table 1 Examples of inappropriately defined relationships between terms
|
Relationship |
Examples |
Remark |
|
UF |
1. Locomotion UF Walking |
Incorrect Relationship: Walking is not a synonym of Locomotion. WordNet shows that Walking is the hyponym of Locomotion. |
|
2. Digestive juices |
Incorrect Relationship: Digestive juices is not a synonym of Chyme, and the two terms have different hypernyms in WordNet. |
|
|
BT/NT |
1. Milk NT Milk fat |
Incorrect Relationship: Milk <containsSubstance> Milk fat. |
|
2. Portugal BT Western Europe |
Incorrect Relationship: Portugal <spatiallyIncludedin> Western Europe |
The relationships used in AGROVOC consist of at least three types: UF/USE, BT/NT and RT. Because they are very generally defined (cf. printed version of AGROVOC, Fourth Ed., pp. xv-xvii), they have been applied inconsistently. RT, in particular, has been used to link any two, usually non-hierarchically related terms that are felt to be associated with each other. Further refinements to this relationship are needed to reflect the more meaningful and specific associative semantics existing between terms in the thesaurus.
Table 2 Examples of the use of RT to represent different semantic relationships
|
Relationship |
Examples |
Remark (More Appropriate Relationship) |
|
RT |
1. Mutton RT Sheep |
Mutton <madeFrom> Sheep |
|
2. Rice RT Rice flour |
Rice <usedToMake> Rice flour |
|
|
3. FAO RT UN |
FAO <memberOf> UN |
