Ontologies enable knowledge sharing and interdisciplinary collaboration by providing standardized, structured vocabularies for diverse communities. While logical axioms are a cornerstone of ontology design, natural language elements such as annotations are equally critical for conveying intended meaning and ensuring consistent term usage. This paper explores how meaning is represented in ontologies and how it can be effectively represented and communicated, addressing challenges such as indeterminacy of reference and meaning holism. To this end, it proposes an approach founded on the use of a new structure, named 'ontological component' and defined by: a term-centered design; enhanced characterization of both formal and natural language statements; an operationalizable definition of communicated meaning based on general assertions; and the integration of natural language elements into the logical theory. By formalizing the meaning of ontological components, this work seeks to enhance the semantic robustness of terms, improving their clarity and accessibility across domains. Furthermore, it aims to address practical challenges in applied ontologies, such as facilitating reuse and managing versioning, thereby strengthening their role in diverse applications.

翻译：本体通过为不同社群提供标准化、结构化词汇，促进了知识共享与跨学科协作。尽管逻辑公理是本体设计的基石，但诸如注释等自然语言元素对于传达预期意义和确保术语使用的一致性同样至关重要。本文探讨了意义在本体中的表示方式，以及如何有效地表示和传达意义，并处理了指称不确定性和意义整体论等挑战。为此，本文提出了一种基于使用名为“本体组件”的新结构的方法，该结构通过以下特征定义：以术语为中心的设计；对形式化语句和自然语言语句的增强表征；基于一般断言的可操作化传达意义定义；以及将自然语言元素整合到逻辑理论中。通过对本体组件的意义进行形式化，本研究旨在增强术语的语义鲁棒性，提高其在不同领域中的清晰度和可访问性。此外，本文还致力于解决应用本体中的实际挑战，例如促进复用和管理版本控制，从而加强本体在各种应用中的作用。