The World Wide Web has the potential to become the primary source for

storing and accessing data. However, its content is marked up in such

a way that it is accessible only to humans.

 

Current Web search engines have serious difficulties in processing

search queries. Even though they return impressive results, their

level of precision and recall clearly shows their limitations.

 

An interesting alternative is the creation of a Semantic Web in which

meaning is made explicit, allowing machines to process and integrate

Web resources intelligently. This technology might allow for quick and

accurate web search and facilitate communication among heterogeneous

web-accesible devices.

 

The aim of the course is to examine this area of research by reading

and discussing papers. We will also extend the techniques developed

within the Semantic Web to deal with the integration of heterogeneous

linguistic data encoded in various language resources such as corpora

and databases. This will be achieved through the creation of an ontology of

linguistic concepts which will formalize linguistic knowledge and will allow

us to reason about it.