The merged upper model: A linguistic ontology for German and English

A detailed comparison of the Penman Upper Model and the KOMET German Upper Model has been carried out in order to construct a new Merged Upper Model capable of serving as the ideational basis for generation in both English and German. Previously proposed criteria for conducting such a merge are expanded on and evaluated. It is established that no (semi-)automatic merging of such knowledge sources can be expected to produce a reasonable result and that detailed comparison of the kind reported is essential. The result of the merge is now being used as the basis for sentence generation in English, German and Dutch.