Omega is a 120,000-node terminological ontology constructed at USC ISI as the reorganization and synthesis of WordNet (versions 2.0 and 2.1), which is a lexically oriented network constructed on general cognitive principles; and Mikrokosmos, a conceptual resource originally conceived to support translation, into a new upper model, created expressly in order to facilitate the merging of lower models into a functional whole. Omega, like its close predecessor SENSUS, can be characterized as a "shallow", lexically oriented, term taxonomy. By far the majority of its concepts can be stated in English by a single word. Omega contains no formal concept definitions and only relatively few interconnections (semantic relations) between concepts. By making few commitments to either specific theories of semantics or particular representations, Omega enjoys a malleability that has allowed it to be used in a wide variety of applications, from translation to question answering to information integration.
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