Tuttle M S, Olson N E, Campbell K E, Sherertz D D, Nelson S J, Cole W G
Lexical Technology, Inc., Alameda, CA.
Proc Annu Symp Comput Appl Med Care. 1994:145-9.
The Metathesaurus is a machine-created, human edited and enhanced synthesis of authoritative biomedical terminologies. Its formal properties permit it to be a) exploited by computers, and b) modified and enhanced without compromising that usage. If further constraints were imposed on the existence and identity of Metathesaurus relationships, i.e., if every Metathesaurus concept had a "genus" and a "differentia," then the Metathesaurus could be converted into an "Aristotelian Hierarchy." In this sense, a genus is a concept that classifies another concept, and a differentia is a concept that distinguishes the classified concept from all other concepts in the same class. Since, in principle, these constraints would make the Metathesaurus easier to leverage and maintain computationally, it is interesting to ask to what degree the maintenance and enhancement procedures now in place are producing a Metathesaurus that is also an "Aristotelian Hierarchy." Given a liberal interpretation of the current Metathesaurus schema, the proportion of the Metathesaurus that is "Aristotelian" in each annual version is increasing in spite of dramatic concurrent increases in the number of Metathesaurus concepts. Without formality there is no modifiability nor scalability. [1] We need formal methods and computer-based tools that can help us with the task [of controlled medical vocabulary construction]. We need research in which controlled vocabulary development is the focus rather than a stepping stone for work on other theories and applications. [2]
元词库是对权威生物医学术语进行机器创建、人工编辑和增强后的合成体。其形式属性使其能够：a) 被计算机利用；b) 在不影响这种使用的情况下进行修改和增强。如果对元词库关系的存在和标识施加进一步的约束，即如果每个元词库概念都有一个“属”和一个“种差”，那么元词库就可以转换为一个“亚里士多德层级体系”。从这个意义上说，属是对另一个概念进行分类的概念，种差是将被分类概念与同一类中的所有其他概念区分开来的概念。原则上，这些约束将使元词库在计算上更易于利用和维护，那么现在实施的维护和增强程序在多大程度上正在产生一个也是“亚里士多德层级体系”的元词库，这是一个有趣的问题。鉴于对当前元词库模式的宽松解释，尽管元词库概念的数量同时急剧增加，但每个年度版本中“亚里士多德式”的元词库比例仍在上升。没有形式化就没有可修改性和可扩展性。[1] 我们需要形式化方法和基于计算机的工具来帮助我们完成 [构建受控医学词汇的] 任务。我们需要开展以受控词汇发展为重点而非作为其他理论和应用研究垫脚石的研究。[2]
