Taxonomies and Ontologies in Web Semantic Applications:  The New Emerging Semantic Lexicon-Based Model

This paper addresses the new emerging approach of Semantic Lexicon-based systems for modeling semantic Web applications. The paper endeavors to shed lights on some misconceptions in the literature about the use of taxonomy and ontology as interchangeable terms, defining a midpoint between the two extremes. Semantic Lexicon is considered as the right match between the semantic layer represented by a given ontology and the lexical layer represented by a given taxonomy. Agent-based implementations that employ WordNet as Semantic Lexicon are currently being tested within this framework.