Université de Montréal - Thèse sous forme numérique

136More precisely, the authors are interested in: ―(1) the conceptual organizationunderlying any knowledge resource; (2) the multidimensional nature of conceptualrepresentations; and (3) knowledge extraction through the use of multilingual corpora‖(Faber et al. 2006: 190). In order to structure specialized domains and reflect alldimensions of meaning, this group of researchers use certain aspects of FrameSemantics (Fillmore 1976, 1977, 1982, 1985) and FrameNet methodology. As Garciade Quesada and Reimerink state (2010: 102), both projects take on a situationalperspective, they both use corpus evidence and they both study and provide informationon the semantics as well as on the syntactical behaviour of the items under analysis. Inaddition, they both use an integrated top-down and bottom-up approach (Faber et al.2009: 6):The bottom-up approach consists of extracting information from a corpus oftexts in various languages, specifically related to the domain. Our top-downapproach includes the information provided by specialized dictionaries andother reference material, complemented by the help of experts in the field.One of their first proposals in the context of the ―frame-based approach toterminology‖ focuses on the domain of coastal engineering and illustrates why entitiesthat take part in processes are hard to describe by means of conceptual trees. Theauthors start by identifying the ―conceptual framework‖ of a central event in thedomain, the Coastal Engineering Event (henceforth CEE), which serves as a kind oftemplate to organize a frame-based structure of specialized knowledge. Again, thisreflects the authors‘ concern about the representation of specialized knowledge. TheCEE is a PROCESS initiated by an AGENT that affects a PATIENT and that produces aRESULT. These ―macrocategories‖ are concept roles characteristic of the domain andbecause they are complex they can include other categories. For example, AGENT can bedivided into ―natural agent‖ and ―human agent‖, PROCESS into ―natural process‖ and―artificial process‖, etc (Figure 23).