Smiley Ontology

Smiley Ontology Specification

Working Draft — 30 April 2010

This version:
http://www.smileyontology.com/spec/2010/SMILEY-20100430/ (rdf)
Latest version:
http://www.smileyontology.com/spec/ (rdf)
Last Update:
2010-04-30
Revision:
0.2
Authors:
Nikola Milikic - University of Belgrade, Belgrade, Serbia
Filip Radulovic - University of Belgrade, Belgrade, Serbia
Nela Kolundzija - University of Belgrade, Belgrade, Serbia
Aleksandar Svitlica - University of Belgrade, Belgrade, Serbia
Contributors:
Milan Stankovic - Université Paris-Sud XI, Orsay
Jelena Jovanovic - Faculty of Organizational Sciences, University of Belgrade

Abstract

The Smiley Ontology provides the main concepts and properties required to describe structure of a smiley and to capture and formal represent semantics of emotions and emotional states that are contained within smiley. This document contains a detailed description of the Smiley Ontology.

Status of this Document

NOTE: This section describes the status of this document at the time of its publication. Other documents may supersede this document.

This specification is an evolving document. This document is generated by combining a machine-readable Smiley Ontology expressed in RDF/XML with a specification template and a set of per-term documents.

Authors welcome suggestions on the Smiley Ontology and this document. Please send comments to the smiley-ontology@googlegroups.com mailing list. This document may be updated or added to based on implementation experience, but no commitment is made by the authors regarding future updates.

Table of Contents

  1. Introduction
    1. Terminology and notation
  2. Smiley Ontology at a glance
  3. Smiley Ontology overview
    1. Example
  4. Cross-reference for Smiley Ontology classes and properties

Appendices

  1. References
  2. Acknowledgements

 


1 Introduction

Since the very beginning of the Internet and communication via e-mails, instant messengers (IM) and other large number of services that eventually arise, people used emoticons (smileys) as one of the most useful, easiest, and interesting ways of expressing their emotions, state or action in some moment. As a textual portrayal of a one's mood or facial expression, people use emoticons when they e-mail a letter to a friend, in a chat with their pen pals, or when they want to comment on a blog post or a Facebook photo from a best friend’s birthday party. Shortly, whenever one wants to express himself, instead of typing too much, he will just use one simple concept – emoticons, and in many cases it will tell more than a thousand words. And nowadays, emoticons aren’t just a few simple characters and their combination. The concept of emoticon has evolved through years, so we see it as a fully colored picture, used to enrich text context or replace it entirely, thus bringing much richer experience to a user. It can be a facial expression,an object, or a piece of text, and can present a large number of activities, and even be animated.

There are a large number of different systems that enable the use of emoticons, and all of them have different collection of emoticons. If you pick up one emoticon from a one system, probably you will not find the same one in any other. The same thing stands for the semantics. It is often that there are plenty emoticons that are visually different, but they’re all semantically the same.

The fact that different systems are using different set of emoticons, even for presenting the same emotion, state or action, and that the semantics of the emoticons is not accessible for automatic interpretation, points out that there is space for improvement. Therefore, we propose the use of Smiley Ontology an ontology that aims to enable interchange of emoticons between different systems, without any loss of their semantics, as well as to allow for capturing and formal representation of semantics of emotions and emotional states that are widely spread across the Web. For more information about the project goals and more examples of Ontology use please refer to the project's wiki.

1.1 Terminology and notation

The keywords "MUST", "MUST NOT", "REQUIRED", "SHALL", "SHALL NOT", "SHOULD", "SHOULD NOT", "RECOMMENDED", "MAY", and "OPTIONAL" in this document are to be interpreted as described in RFC 2119.

Terms 'smiley' and 'emoticon' are used as synonyms.

Namespace URIs of the general form "http://www.example.com/" represent some application-dependent or context-dependent URI as defined in RFC 2396.

The XML Namespace URIs that MUST be used by implementations of this specification are:

2. Smiley Ontology at a glance

An alphabetical index of Smiley Ontology terms, by class (concepts) and by property (relationships, attributes), are given below. All the terms are hyperlinked to their detailed description for quick reference

Classes:CharacterRepresentation,Emoticon,EmoticonFraction,EmoticonSystem,Emotion,FacialExpression,Message,Object,Picture,State,VisualRepresentation

Properties: belongsToSystem,characters,currentState,drinking,eating,hasFraction,hasMessage,holding,hugging,isAnimated,kicking,kissing,playing,playingWith,punching,relationship,representedBy,representsEmotion,representsObject,
smoking,speakingWith,standingOn,systemURLtalkingTo,tapping,throwing,wearing

Instances: AngryFace,BeboEmoticonSystem,FacebookEmoticonSystem,GMailEmoticomSystem,HappyFace,Hi5EmoticonSystem,MsnEmoticonSystem,MySpaceEmoticonSystem,PuzzledFace,SadFace,SkypeEmoticonSystem,
SurprisedFace

3. Smiley Ontology overview

The core classes in Smiley Ontology are shown on the following figure.

opo core classes

The core class of the Smiley Ontology is the Emoticon class, which formally represents the concept of a smiley. Each smiley can be visually represented as a sequence of characters, a picture or both. So, in our model, we have introduced VisualRepresentation class. CharacterRepresentation and Picture are possible representations of VisualRepresentation. An emoticon can be animated or static and still carry the same meaning, thus the property isAnimated of the VisualRepresentation class is introduced.

As each IM, Social Network and any other social software tool uses predefined set of emoticons which are disposable for its users, we have defined the EmoticonSystem class as an assembly of smiley instances originating from a specific social software tool. Each emoticon system uses its own pictures for depicting emoticons.

One of the most important connotations that an emoticon carries is emotion (Emotion class). Emoticon is often used to accentuate the emotional context of a sentence or the whole text. What is more, it is not a rare occasion that an emoticon even replaces the text entirely and does that not only without the loss of emotional semantic, but it often makes the emotion clearer to the recipient.(e.g. setting status message just “:-(” clearly means being sad).

An emoticon does not need to be a single item (or just a face expression). It can consist of many fractions (EmoticonFraction class) that each has its own meaning:

Meaning of these fractions of an emoticon can vary significantly, but in general they can represent a State of emoticon fraction (e.g. ringing, sleeping). In addition, each fraction can be in some sort of relationship(s) with another one (e.g. smiley carrying sunglasses).

3.1. Example

Here is a very basic document describing a smiley cool smiley in Turtle syntax:

@prefix rdf: <http://www.w3.org/1999/02/22-rdf-syntax-ns#>.
@prefix smiley: <http://www.smileyontology.com/ns#>.
@prefix foaf: <http://xmlns.com/foaf/0.1/>.

<http://www.gmail.com/smiley122> rdf:type smiley:Emoticon;
smiley:representedBy :smileyVisualRepresentation;
smiley:representedBy :smileyCharacterRepresentation;
smiley:hasFraction smiley:happyFace;
smiley:hasFraction :Fraction2;
smiley:representsEmotion :Emotion.

:smileyVisualRepresentation rdf:type smiley:Picture;
smiley:isAnimated false;
smiley:belongsToSystem smiley:gMailEmoticomSystem;
foaf:depiction <http://gmail.com/smiley122.gif>.

:smileyCharacterRepresentation rdf:type smiley:CharacterRepresentation;
smiley:isAnimated false;
smiley:characters "B-)";
smiley:characters "B)".

:Fraction2 rdf:type smiley:Object;
smiley:representsObject <http://umbel.org/umbel/sc/Sunglasses>.

smiley:happyFace smiley:wearing :Fraction2.

:Emotion rdf:type smiley:Emotion.

The example shows a description of a smiley from the picture above. The smiley consists of two fractions. The smiley is represented with facial expression that clearly states happines, so we referenced to the instance smiley:happyFace. The other fraction (#Fraction2) are sunglasses, type of smiley:Object class, that reference to the UMBEL ontology instance http://umbel.org/umbel/sc/Sunglasses. Those two fractions are in a relationship smiley:wearing.

In order to identify smileys' visual representation, we have assigned the identifier #smileyVisualRepresentation to it. First we define the type of #smileyVisualRepresentation as smiley:Picture, and then we specify its properties:

This smiley can also be represented with characters, why we've introduced #smileyCharacterRepresentation instance. It is specified that this smiley can be written with two different sequences of characters, "B-)" and "B)" and that this character representation is not animated.

4. Cross-reference for OPO classes and properties

Class: smiley:CharacterRepresentation

URI: http://www.smileyontology.com/ns#CharacterRepresentation

CharacterRepresentation - Sequence of characters that depicts a smiley.

sub-class-of:
smiley:VisualRepresentation

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Class: smiley:Emoticon

URI: http://www.smileyontology.com/ns#Emoticon

Emoticon - Emoticon class formally represents the concept of an emoticon.

sub-class-of:
owl:Thing

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Class: smiley:EmoticonFraction

URI: http://www.smileyontology.com/ns#EmoticonFraction

EmoticonFraction - A component of an emoticon used to represent one of its fractions.

sub-class-of:
owl:Thing

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Class: smiley:EmoticonSystem

URI: http://www.smileyontology.com/ns#EmoticonSystem

EmoticonSystem - EmoticonSystem class is an assembly of emoticon instances originating from a specific social software tool.

sub-class-of:
owl:Thing

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Class: smiley:Emotion

URI: http://www.smileyontology.com/ns#Emotion

Emotion - Emotion class represents an emotion that emoticon carries.

sub-class-of:
owl:Thing

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Class: smiley:FacialExpression

URI: http://www.smileyontology.com/ns#FacialExpression

FacialExpression - FacialExpression depicts human's face expression (e.g. happy face).

sub-class-of:
smiley:EmoticonFraction

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Class: smiley:Message

URI: http://www.smileyontology.com/ns#Message

Message - Message represents a sequence of characters or a text (e.g. question mark).

sub-class-of:
smiley:EmoticonFraction

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Class: smiley:Object

URI: http://www.smileyontology.com/ns#Object

Object - Object represents an item that an emoticon can contain (e.g. ball, clock).

sub-class-of:
smiley:EmoticonFraction

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Class: smiley:Picture

URI: http://www.smileyontology.com/ns#Picture

Picture - Emoticon's picture.

sub-class-of:
smiley:VisualRepresentation

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Class: smiley:State

URI: http://www.smileyontology.com/ns#State

State - Current state of an emoticon or action it is performing (e.g. ringing, carying, sleeping).

sub-class-of:
owl:Thing

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Class: smiley:VisualRepresentation

URI: http://www.smileyontology.com/ns#VisualRepresentation

VisualRepresentation - VisualRepresentation describes how an emoticon is visuelised.

sub-class-of:
owl:Thing

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Property: smiley:belongsToSystem

URI: http://www.smileyontology.com/ns#belongsToSystem

Belongs To System - The EmoticonSystem that the emoticon belongs to.

OWL Type:
ObjectProperty
Domain:
smiley:Picture
Range:
smiley:EmoticonSystem

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Property: smiley:characters

URI: http://www.smileyontology.com/ns#characters

Characters - The sequence of characters that depicts particular emoticon.

OWL Type:
DatatypeProperty
Domain:
smiley:CharacterRepresentation
Range:
xsd:string

[back to top]

Property: smiley:currentState

URI: http://www.smileyontology.com/ns#currentState

Current State - The state of the smiley.

OWL Type:
ObjectProperty
Domain:
opo:EmoticonFraction
Range:
smiley:State

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Property: smiley:drinking

URI: http://www.smileyontology.com/ns#drinking

Drinking - Indicates that two Emoticon fractions are in relationsihp drinking (e.g. smiley (FacialExpression) is drinking glass of beer (Object)).

OWL Type:
ObjectProperty
sub-class-of:
smiley:relationship

[back to top]

Property: smiley:eating

URI: http://www.smileyontology.com/ns#eating

Eating - Indicates that two Emoticon fractions are in relationsihp eating (e.g. smiley (FacialExpression) is eating sandwich (Object)).

OWL Type:
ObjectProperty
sub-class-of:
smiley:relationship

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Property: smiley:hasFraction

URI: http://www.smileyontology.com/ns#hasFraction

Has Fraction - Emoticon fractions that the emoticon is consisted of.

OWL Type:
ObjectProperty
Domain:
smiley:Emoticon
Range:
smiley:EmoticonFraction

[back to top]

Property: smiley:hasMessage

URI: http://www.smileyontology.com/ns#hasMessage

Has Message - URL of the emoticon system.

OWL Type:
DatatypeProperty
Domain:
smiley:Message
Range:
xsd:string

[back to top]

Property: smiley:holding

URI: http://www.smileyontology.com/ns#holding

Holding - Indicates that two Emoticon fractions are in relationsihp holding (e.g. smiley (FacialExpression) is holding flowers (Object)).

OWL Type:
ObjectProperty
sub-class-of:
smiley:relationship

[back to top]

Property: smiley:hugging

URI: http://www.smileyontology.com/ns#hugging

Hugging - Indicates that two Emoticon fractions are in relationsihp hugging (e.g. smiley (FacialExpression) is hugging another smiley).

OWL Type:
ObjectProperty
sub-class-of:
smiley:relationship

[back to top]

Property: smiley:isAnimated

URI: http://www.smileyontology.com/ns#isAnimated

Is Animated - Describes whether emoticon is animated or not.

OWL Type:
DatatypeProperty
Domain:
smiley:VisualRepresentation
Range:
xsd:boolean

[back to top]

Property: smiley:kicking

URI: http://www.smileyontology.com/ns#kicking

Kicking - Indicates that two Emoticon fractions are in relationsihp kicking (e.g. smiley (FacialExpression) is kicking the ball (Object)).

OWL Type:
ObjectProperty
sub-class-of:
smiley:relationship

[back to top]

Property: smiley:kissing

URI: http://www.smileyontology.com/ns#kissing

Kissing - Indicates that two Emoticon fractions are in relationsihp kissing (e.g. smiley (FacialExpression) is kissing another smiley).

OWL Type:
ObjectProperty
sub-class-of:
smiley:relationship

[back to top]

Property: smiley:playing

URI: http://www.smileyontology.com/ns#playing

Playing - Indicates that two Emoticon fractions are in relationsihp playing (e.g. smiley (FacialExpression) is playing the flute (Object)).

OWL Type:
ObjectProperty
sub-class-of:
smiley:relationship

[back to top]

Property: smiley:playingWith

URI: http://www.smileyontology.com/ns#playingWith

Playing With - Indicates that two Emoticon fractions are in relationsihp playingWith (e.g. smiley (FacialExpression) is playing with another smiley).

OWL Type:
ObjectProperty
sub-class-of:
smiley:relationship

[back to top]

Property: smiley:punching

URI: http://www.smileyontology.com/ns#punching

Punching - Indicates that two Emoticon fractions are in relationsihp punching (e.g. smiley (FacialExpression) is punching the bag (Object)).

OWL Type:
ObjectProperty
sub-class-of:
smiley:relationship

[back to top]

Property: smiley:relationship

URI: http://www.smileyontology.com/ns#relationship

Relationship - Represent that two emoticon fractions are in some relationship

OWL Type:
ObjectProperty
Domain:
smiley:EmoticonFraction
Range:
smiley:EmoticonFraction

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Property: smiley:representedBy

URI: http://www.smileyontology.com/ns#representedBy

Represented By - Visual represetation of the emoticon.

OWL Type:
ObjectProperty
Domain:
smiley:Emoticon
Range:
smiley:VisualRepresentation

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Property: smiley:representsEmotion

URI: http://www.smileyontology.com/ns#representsEmotion

Represents Emotion - Emotion that lays beneath the emoticon.

OWL Type:
ObjectProperty
Domain:
smiley:Emoticon
Range:
smiley:Emotion

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Property: smiley:representsObject

URI: http://www.smileyontology.com/ns#representsObject

Represents Object - Reference to the object that is depicted by emoticon fraction.

OWL Type:
ObjectProperty
Domain:
smiley:Object
Range:
umbel:ExistingObjectType

[back to top]

Property: smiley:smoking

URI: http://www.smileyontology.com/ns#smoking

Smoking - Indicates that two Emoticon fractions are in relationsihp smoking (e.g. smiley (FacialExpression) is smoking the cigarette (Object)).

OWL Type:
ObjectProperty
sub-class-of:
smiley:relationship

[back to top]

Property: smiley:speakingWith

URI: http://www.smileyontology.com/ns#speakingWith

Speaking With -

OWL Type:
ObjectProperty
sub-class-of:
smiley:relationship

[back to top]

Property: smiley:standingOn

URI: http://www.smileyontology.com/ns#standingOn

Standing On - Indicates that two Emoticon fractions are in relationsihp standingOn (e.g. smiley (FacialExpression) is standing on the box (Object)).

OWL Type:
ObjectProperty
sub-class-of:
smiley:relationship

[back to top]

Property: smiley:systemURL

URI: http://www.smileyontology.com/ns#systemURL

System URL - URL of the emoticon system.

OWL Type:
DatatypeProperty
Domain:
smiley:EmoticonSystem
Range:
xsd:anyURI

[back to top]

Property: smiley:talkingTo

URI: http://www.smileyontology.com/ns#talkingTo

Talking To - .

OWL Type:
ObjectProperty
sub-class-of:
smiley:relationship

[back to top]

Property: smiley:tapping

URI: http://www.smileyontology.com/ns#tapping

Tapping - Indicates that two Emoticon fractions are in relationsihp tapping (e.g. smiley (FacialExpression) is tapping the ball (Object)).

OWL Type:
ObjectProperty
sub-class-of:
smiley:relationship

[back to top]

Property: smiley:throwing

URI: http://www.smileyontology.com/ns#throwing

Throwing - Indicates that two Emoticon fractions are in relationsihp throwing (e.g. smiley (FacialExpression) is throwing the spear (Object)).

OWL Type:
ObjectProperty
sub-class-of:
smiley:relationship

[back to top]

Property: smiley:wearing

URI: http://www.smileyontology.com/ns#wearing

Wearing - Indicates that two Emoticon fractions are in relationsihp wearing (e.g. smiley (FacialExpression) is wearing the sunglasses (Object)).

OWL Type:
ObjectProperty
sub-class-of:
smiley:relationship

[back to top]

Instance: smiley:AngryFace

URI: http://www.smileyontology.com/ns#AngryFace

AngryFace - Represents angry face.

RDF Type:
smiley:FacialExpression

[back to top]

Instance: smiley:BeboEmoticonSystem

URI: http://www.smileyontology.com/ns#BeboEmoticonSystem

BeboEmoticonSystem - Emoticon system for Bebo Social Network.

RDF Type:
smiley:EmoticonSystem

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Instance: smiley:FacebookEmoticonSystem

URI: http://www.smileyontology.com/ns#FacebookEmoticonSystem

FacebookEmoticonSystem - Emoticon system for Facebook Social Network.

RDF Type:
smiley:EmoticonSystem

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Instance: smiley:GMailEmoticomSystem

URI: http://www.smileyontology.com/ns#GMailEmoticomSystem

GMailEmoticomSystem - Emoticon system for GMail Instant Messenger.

RDF Type:
smiley:EmoticonSystem

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Instance: smiley:HappyFace

URI: http://www.smileyontology.com/ns#HappyFace

HappyFace - Represents happy face.

RDF Type:
smiley:FacialExpression

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Instance: smiley:Hi5EmoticonSystem

URI: http://www.smileyontology.com/ns#Hi5EmoticonSystem

Hi5EmoticonSystem - Emoticon system for Hi5 Social Network.

RDF Type:
smiley:EmoticonSystem

[back to top]

Instance: smiley:MsnEmoticonSystem

URI: http://www.smileyontology.com/ns#MsnEmoticonSystem

MsnEmoticonSystem - Emoticon system for MSN Instant Messenger.

RDF Type:
smiley:EmoticonSystem

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Instance: smiley:MySpaceEmoticonSystem

URI: http://www.smileyontology.com/ns#MySpaceEmoticonSystem

MySpaceEmoticonSystem - Emoticon system for MySpace Social Network.

RDF Type:
smiley:EmoticonSystem

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Instance: smiley:PuzzledFace

URI: http://www.smileyontology.com/ns#PuzzledFace

PuzzledFace - Represents puzzled face.

RDF Type:
smiley:FacialExpression

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Instance: smiley:SadFace

URI: http://www.smileyontology.com/ns#SadFace

SadFace - Represents sad face.

RDF Type:
smiley:FacialExpression

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Instance: smiley:SkypeEmoticonSystem

URI: http://www.smileyontology.com/ns#SkypeEmoticonSystem

SkypeEmoticonSystem - Emoticon system for Skype Instant Messenger.

RDF Type:
smiley:EmoticonSystem

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Instance: smiley:SurprisedFace

URI: http://www.smileyontology.com/ns#SurprisedFace

SurprisedFace - Represents surprised face.

RDF Type:
smiley:FacialExpression

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A References

 

B Acknowledgements

The document was generated using SpecGen5. We would like to thank to Milan Stankovic and Jelena Jovanovic for all extremely helpful suggestions and time devoted to us during development of the ontology.