Lexical Form

• CURIE: gmeow:LexicalForm
• IRI: https://blackcatinformatics.ca/gmeow/LexicalForm
• Category: class
• Defined by: gmeow:slices/lexicon
• Box roles: TBox role (What is this?)

A concrete form of a lexical item — written, spoken, signed, rendered, reconstructed, normalized, transliterated, or translated. The surface representation is carried by gmeow:formRepresentation; the kind of form is a gmeow:LexicalFormType value. A single lexical item may have many coexisting forms (Principle 9). Aligns to OntoLex Form by reference.

Structure

Subclass of: gmeow:InformationObject

Practical Pattern

Use gmeow:LexicalForm as a specialized kind of gmeow:InformationObject. Add statement metadata or a standpoint when the assertion needs provenance, confidence, or vantage.

Example Snippets

These snippets are generated from canonical slice examples and trimmed to the Turtle blocks where this term appears.

Word Etymology

• Source: slices/extensions/lexicon/examples/word-etymology.ttl
• Examples catalog: open in catalog#example-slices-extensions-lexicon-examples-word-etymology

# SPDX-FileCopyrightText: 2026 Blackcat Informatics® Inc. <paudley@blackcatinformatics.ca>
# SPDX-License-Identifier: CC-BY-4.0
#
# Worked example: a word, its forms, and its etymology . A gmeow:LexicalItem
# is a lexeme in a language; its written/spoken/signed surface strings are
# separate gmeow:LexicalForms (gmeow:hasLexicalForm), so the same lexeme can carry
# many forms across scripts and registers. A gmeow:EtymologicalDerivation reifies
# WHERE a word came from — source → target with a gmeow:derivationKind
# (inheritance / borrowing / calque / sound-change …) — so "English 'ontology'
# was BORROWED from Greek" is a first-class, typed claim, not a free-text note.
@prefix gmeow: <https://blackcatinformatics.ca/gmeow/> .
@prefix ex:    <https://blackcatinformatics.ca/gmeow/examples/lexicon/> .
@prefix rdfs:  <http://www.w3.org/2000/01/rdf-schema#> .

ex:ontologyForm a gmeow:LexicalForm ;
    gmeow:formOf             ex:ontology ;
    gmeow:formRepresentation "ontology" ;
    gmeow:formType           gmeow:formWritten .

Common Companion Terms

gmeow:InformationObject

Projects To

External Equivalences

Equivalent or closely aligned targets: ontolex

Linkages

Generated from the canonical mapping DSL. SSSOM files are the generated public interchange form for term equivalences.

Term Equivalences

Projection Coverage

Usage Advice

Use when

• Use for a concrete surface realization of a lexical item — a written string, an IPA transcription, a signed form, a reconstructed shape — bearing its representation and its form type.

Avoid when

• Avoid for the abstract lexeme itself (that is gmeow:LexicalItem) and avoid collapsing two genuinely different representations into one form — a different representation is a different form.

How to use

• Mint the form, set its string via gmeow:formRepresentation, classify it with gmeow:formType, link it back with gmeow:formOf (inverse of gmeow:hasLexicalForm), and record its transliteration scheme where applicable.

Examples

• ex:waterWritten a gmeow:LexicalForm; gmeow:formRepresentation "water"; gmeow:formType gmeow:formWritten.