[Sigia-l] What is a "Top Term" in a thesaurus?

[Leonard Will]

>On Wed, 16 Feb 2005 15:08:43 +0800, Melvin Kumar <melvink2 at gmail.com> wrote:
>> Hello everyone,
>>
>> I am trying to seek clarification of the meaning of the term "Top
>> Term" in a thesaurus.

In message <d9e383c80502160729c992f12 at mail.gmail.com> on Wed, 16 Feb 
2005, James Melzer <jamesmelzer at gmail.com> wrote
>The top term, if I understand what you are looking for, is the very
>first term in a hierarchical scheme like a taxonomy or ontology. It
>scopes the domain of the CV by providing a single concept to which all
>other concepts are children. In the example of the animal kingdom, the
>top term is 'animals' and then it is bifurcated into 'vertibrates' and
>'invertibrates' and is subdivided from there.

More generally, "top term" often means any preferred term that has no 
broader terms.

Some thesauri build concepts into a small number of large hierarchies, 
as suggested by James. If these are built on true generic relationships 
the hierarchies can often be equated with facets, as in the Art and 
Architecture Thesaurus, for example. Other thesauri do not link so many 
terms at the higher levels, so that there are many "top terms" and a lot 
of little hierarchies.

There is a draft glossary of this sort of terminology at
<http://www.willpowerinfo.co.uk/glossary.htm>.

It does not at present contain a definition for "top term" - I'll think 
about including it. Any other comments on these definitions are welcome.

Leonard Will

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