A Linguistic Approach to Conceptual Modeling with Semantic Types and OntoUML

The process of conceptual modeling involves the acquisition of concepts (and of the signs that represent them) used in the Universe of Discourse (UoD) being modeled, and the creation of the model (as a concrete artifact) according to a modeling language grammar. The knowledge about the UoD is obtained from a variety of sources, all of which are mostly expressed in a natural language. It is correct to say that conceptual modeling is much similar to language translation i.e., identifying concepts that are represented by signs of a language, and then representing those same concepts in a different language. Also, the semantic quality of the resulting model (translation) is directly affected by the modeler´s (translator´s) understanding of the source material. As so, conceptual modeling activities can benefit from an analysis carried out from a linguistic point of view, as well as from the use of a modeling language which constructs allow for a representation that is semantically equivalent to the natural language original descriptions. This work proposes a linguistic approach to conceptual modeling based on the notion of semantic types, and on the use of Onto UML as a modeling language. The proposed approach is illustrated in an example.