Semantic and Conceptual Aspects of Volcano Verbs 333As shown in Figure 1, the EE has two types of AGENT that can initiate
processes: inanimate (natural forces) or animate (human beings). NATURAL
AGENTS, such as geological phenomena, cause NATURAL PROCESSES in a
geographic area. These processes affect other entities or PATIENTS which as a
RESULT, may suffer changes. HUMAN AGENTS can also use INSTRUMENTS to
implement ARTIFICIAL PROCESSES (e.g. constructions), which can generate or
prevent EFFECTS normally caused by natural processes. AGENT, PATIENT,
RESULT and INSTRUMENT are the most characteristic semantic roles of this
specialized domain and the EE represents their relationships. However, there
are also peripheral categories that include concepts used for the measurement,
analysis, and description of the processes in the main event. Accordingly, each
subdomain within the event is characterized by a template with a prototypical
set of conceptual relations.
The practical application of FBT is the environmental knowledge base
EcoLexicon (http://ecolexicon.ugr.es). EcoLexicon represents the
conceptual structure of the specialized domain of the environment in the
form of a visual thesaurus in which environmental concepts are configured
in semantic networks. Concepts are designated by terms in six languages:
English, French, German, Greek, Russian, and Spanish. Currently
containing 3,599 concepts and 20,122 terms in the various languages,
EcoLexicon provides a vast array of conceptual and linguistic information
for each entry. Figure 2 displays the entry of VOLCANO in EcoLexicon.
Figure 2. Entry of VOLCANO in EcoLexicon.