ISO/DIS 24617-11

DRAFT INTERNATIONAL STANDARD
ISO/DIS 24617-11
ISO/TC 37/SC 4 Secretariat: KATS
Voting begins on: Voting terminates on:
2020-03-16 2020-06-08
Language resource management — Semantic annotation
framework (SemAF) —
Part 11:
Measurable Quantitative information (MQI)
Gestion des ressources linguistiques — Cadre d'annotation sémantique —
Partie 11: Mesurer l'information quantitative (MQI)
ICS: 01.020
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ISO/DIS 24617-11:2020(E)
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ISO/DIS 24617-11:2020(E)
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Foreword ........................................................................................................................................................................................................................................iv

Introduction ..................................................................................................................................................................................................................................v

1 Scope ................................................................................................................................................................................................................................. 1

2 Normative references ...................................................................................................................................................................................... 1

3 Terms and definitions ..................................................................................................................................................................................... 2

4 Background and Motivations ................................................................................................................................................................... 4

5 Purposes and Requirements .................................................................................................................................................................... 5

6 Abstract Specification of SemAF-MQI .............................................................................................................................................. 6

6.1 Overview ...................................................................................................................................................................................................... 6

6.2 Characteristics of SemAF-MQI ................................................................................................................................................... 6

6.3 Metamodel .................................................................................................................................................................................................. 6

6.4 Abstract syntax of QML (QML_as) .......................................................................................................................................... 8

6.5 Concrete Syntaxes of QML (QML_cs) .................................................................................................................................... 8

7 XML-based Concrete Syntax of QML (QML_csx) .................................................................................................................... 9

7.1 Overall ............................................................................................................................................................................................................ 9

7.2 Tag names with ID prefixes .......................................................................................................................................................... 9

7.3 Attribute specification of the root ........................................................................................................................ 9

7.4 Attribute specification of the basic element types ................................................................................................... 9

7.5 Attribute specification of the link types and ................................................................10

7.6 Illustrations of QML_csx ...............................................................................................................................................................11

7.6.1 Overall ....................................................................................................................................................................................11

7.6.2 Sample data .......................................................................................................................................................................11

7.6.3 Procedure of annotation ........................................................................................................................................11

8 TEI-based Concrete Syntax of QML (QML_cst).....................................................................................................................13

8.1 Concrete syntaxes of QML (QML_cst) ...............................................................................................................................13

8.1.1 Overall ....................................................................................................................................................................................13

8.1.2 Tag names with ID prefixes ..................................................................................................................................14

8.1.3 Attribute specification of the basic element types ..........................................................................14

8.1.4 Attribute specification of the two link types ........................................................................................15

8.2 Illustrations of QML_cst ................................................................................................................................................................15

8.2.1 Overall ....................................................................................................................................................................................15

8.2.2 Sample data .......................................................................................................................................................................15

8.2.3 Illustrations of TEI-based Concrete Syntax............................................................................................15

Annex A (informative) Illustrations of QML_csx with more samples ...............................................................................19

Annex B (informative) Informal statements of Measurable Quantitative Information ................................22

Annex C (informative) The representation of units ...........................................................................................................................23

Bibliography .............................................................................................................................................................................................................................24

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The committee responsible for this document is ISO/TC 37, Language and Terminology, Subcommittee

ISO 24617 consists of the following parts under the general title Language resource management —

Measurable quantitative information (MQI) such as ‘165 cm’ or ‘60 kg’ of ‘John’ that applies to the height

or weight of the person is very common in ordinary language. MQI describes one of basic properties

which is associated with the magnitude aspect of quantity. Such information is much more abundant

in scientific publications or technical reports to the extent that it constitutes an essential part of

communicative segments of language in general. The processing of such information is thus required

This document, named ‘SemAF-MQI’, thus aims to focus on specifying a general annotation scheme

with following the principles of semantic annotation laid down in ISO 24617-6 in general and the basic

requirements of ISO 24611 Linguistic annotation framework (LAF), that facilitates the processing of

MQI in scientific and technical language and to make it interoperable with other semantic annotation

NOTE 1 ISO 24617-1:2012 (E) TimeML and ISO 24617-7: 2014 (E) Spatial information, for instance,

have proposed a way of annotating measures on time (durations or time amounts) and space (distances),

respectively. The serious disucssion of annotating measures as part of ISO 24617 was initiated at the 11 joint

ACL-ISO/TC 37/SC 4/WG 2 Workshop on Interoperable Semantic Annotation (ISA-11) and was continued at

the ISA-13 , ISA-14 , and ISA-15 workshops. ISO 24612: 2012 (E) LAF provides a pivotal form (GrAF, graphic

annotation framework) that makes all the annotation of temporal or spatial measures in these two annotation

schemes interchangeable with those measure annotations in the new document SemAF-MQI.

Focusing on measurements in scientifico-technological language, SemAF-MQI as an ISO standard is

expected to contribute to information extraction (IR) , question answering (QA), text summarization

NOTE 2 To enhance the readability of this document and to correct some obvisous editorial errors, some

editorial changes were made on the earlier version of CD 24617-11 MQI that had been submitted to the successful

• Each item in Bibliography as well as in Clause 2 Normative references was made to be referred to in

• Three of the illustrative examples in clause 7.6 Illustrations of QML_csx were moved to a newly

created Annex A (informative) without any change of content change in order to lighten the burden

• The white and black coloing of Figure 1 — Metamodel of QML was changed to the multiple coloring

As one of the basic physical properties, quantity is associated with multitude (how many) and magnitude

(how much). Focusing on the magnitudinal aspect of quantity, this document, which is named “SemAF-

MQI” henceforth, aims at formulating a specification language for the construction of an annotation

scheme for measurable quantitative information (MQI) in scientifico-technological language. The main

characteristics of SemAF-MQI is that quantitative information is presented as measures expressed in

terms of a pair , consisting of a numerically expressed quantity n and a unit u, which is either

NOTE 1 MQI stands for “measurable quantitative information”, whereas SemAF-MQI refers to the part 11 of

The scope of SemAF-MQI is restricted to the measurable or magnitudinal aspect of quantity so that it

can focus on the technical or practical use of measurements in IR (information retrieval), QA (question

answering), TS (text summarization), and other NLP (natural language processing) applications. The

scope is restricted to the domains of technology that carry more applicational relevance than some

theoretical issues found in the ordinary use of language. The subsequent part of ISO 24617 (Part 12)

deals with more general and theoretical issues of quantification and quantitative information.

NOTE 2 The scope of this document is intentionally restricted to the measurable or magnitudinal aspect of

quantity so that SemAF-MQI focuses on the technical or practical use of measurements in IR, QA, TS, and other

NLP applications. The scope is restricted to domains of technology that carry more applicational relevance than

theoretical issues found in the ordinary use of language. Fruit as well as meat is, for instance, sold at markets

in terms of weight but not of pieces. Furthermore, the subsequent part of ISO 24617 (Part 12) deals with more

general and theoretical issues of quantification and plurals (e.g., “three apples) including quantitative information

The scope of SemAF-MQI also treats temporal durations that are discussed in Part 1 of ISO 24617

SemAF-Time (ISO-TimeML) and spatial measures such as distances that are treated in Part 7 of

ISO 24617 Spatial information (ISO-Space), while making them interoperable with other measure types.

It also accommodates the treatment of measures or amounts that are introduced in ISO 24617-6 SemAF

NOTE 3 The scope of this document (Part 11) also treats temporal durations that are discussed in Part 1 of

ISO 24617 SemAF-Time (TimeML) and spatial measures such as distances that are treated in Part 7 of ISO 24617

Spatial information, while making them interoperable with other measure types. It also accommodates the

treatment of measures or amounts that are introduced in ISO 24617-6 SemAF Principles. Its scope thus covers

The following documents, in whole or in part, are normatively referenced in this document and are

indispensable for its application. For dated references, only the edition cited applies. For undated

references, the latest edition of the referenced document (including any amendments) applies.

ISO 24612:2012, Language resource management — Linguistic annotation framework (LAF)

ISO 24617-1:2012, Language resource management — Semantic annotation framework (SemAF) — Part 1:

ISO 24617-6:2016, Language resource management — Semantic annotation framework — Part 6:

ISO 24617-7:2014, Language resource management — Semantic annotation framework — Part 7: Spatial

ISO/IEC 14977:1996, Information technology - Syntactic metalanguage - Extended BNF

NOTE 1 The following two documents are de-facto standards to be followed by SemAF-MQI:

TEI P5: Guidelines for Electronic Text Encoding and Interchange, The TEI Consortium, 2019 .

XML Schema, Part 2: Datatypes, 2nd edition, W3C Recommendation, 28 October 2004 .

ISO and IEC maintain terminological databases for use in standardization at the following addresses:

property of a measureable object referring to its magnitude (how much) or multitude (how many).

Note 1 to entry: Compare with ISO 80000-1:2009, 3 Terms and Definitions, 3.1: property of a phenomenon, body,

or substance, where the property has a magnitude that can be expressed by means of a number and a reference.

quantity in a conventionally chosen subset of a given system of quantities, where no quantity in the

Note 1 to entry: Kinds of quantities include seven base quantities defined by the International System of

Note 2 to entry: In ISO 80000-1:2009, 3 Terms and Definition, the symbols such as L and M, which are called base

quantity, in a system of quantities, defined in terms of the base quantities of that system

EXAMPLE Speed is a derived quantity defined by length (distance) over time (LT ), where length (L) and

specification language for the annotation of measurable quantitative information (3.5) extractable

scalar basis, defined and adopted by convention, of measuring objects by multiplying their quantitative

Note 1 to entry: The expressions that are used in measurement such as “meter”, “liter”, and “µmol/kg” are units

by the definition given above. The multitude expressions such as “bottles”, “boxes”, or “two” as in “two bottles of

milk”, “a box of apples”, and “two coffees” sometimes fail to be regarded as units, but they can also be if they are

accepted as units by convention or agreement in some communities. ISO 24617 SemAF Part 12: Quantification

[Refer to ISO 80000-1:2009, 3 Terms and Definitions, 3.9 Unit, 3.10 Base unit, and 3.11 Derived unit.]

[SOURCE: Refer to: ISO 80000-1:2009, 3 Terms and Definitions, 3.9, real scalar quantity, defined and

adopted by convention, with which any other quantity of the same kind can be compared to express the

Note 1 to entry: There are seven base units chosen by the International System of Units (SI) associated with

[SOURCE: ISO 80000-1:2009, 3 Terms and Definitions, 3.9 Unit, 3.10 Base unit, and 3.11 Derived unit.]

EXAMPLE The unit “newton” (N) is a derived unit for a derived quantity “force” (F), which is defined to be

“mass times acceleration” (MLT ), where the quantity “acceleration” is a derived quantity defined by “velocity

divided by time” (VT ) and “velocity” defined by “length (distance) divided by time” (LT ).

[Refer to ISO 80000-1:2009, 3 Terms and Definitions, 3.9 Unit, 3.10 Base unit, and 3.11 Derived unit.]

Quantity exists as a multitude (e.g., “two watermelons”) or magnitude (“one kilogram of watermelon”).

The two basic divisions of quantity imply the principal distinction between continuity (continuum)

and discontinuity, which are two ways of determining quantity. SemAF-MQI only focuses on the

measurement information in scientific and technical texts. Therefore, quantity is regarded as a

magnitude property in the document, which is consistent with ISO 80000 - 1:2009 Quantities and units.

As in ISO 80000-1:2009, the term “unit” is defined in relation to quantity and is used for real scalar

quantity, defined and adopted by convention, with which any other quantity of the same kind can be

compared to express the ratio of the second quantity to the first one as a number. There are two types

This document treats complex derived units as unanalyzed wholes. It does not annotate their internal

structures and components, unless it is required by some special use cases. Neither does the standard

require to specify ways of converting one unit to another. Here are some reasons:

1) Complex derived units such as speed “km/h” (LT-1) or acceleration “m/s2” (LT-2) are understood as

2) Certain domain specific units cannot be decomposed during their conversion to other equivalent

units. For example, Estimated Glomerular Filtration Rate (eGFR) frequently uses the unit “mL/

min/1.73m ” in a medical domain. Thus, a kidney function can be classified into various stages

depending on eGFR, where the stage 1 defines “normal eGFR greater than or equal to 90 mL/

min/1.73m ”. In some cases, the unit can be written as “mL/min/((173/100).m )”. In all these cases,

“1.43” or “173/100” in the units cannot be annotated separately for automatic conversion since they

3) Units can be converted automatically in an effective way such as with the use of a conversion

table. For example, by using directly “1 mmol/l” that equals to “18 mg/dl”, the computer can more

effectively convert the unit into another with one single computation rather than convert each part

4) Incomplete units exist. During language processing, there are incomplete units which need to

be detected by using different methods such as by formulating some specific rules or guidelines.

Such rules could be designed to extend a unit into a more complete representation or to complete

missing parts of a derived unit according to some clues such as contextual information or variable-

With the recent advent of artificial intelligence technologies, many applications in IR and NLP have been

developed to acquire meta information from unstructured texts as a core module, such as question

answering systems, automatic speech translation systems, and intelligent assistant systems. In the

process of running such systems, texts are usually found containing a large amount of measurable

quantitative information, constituting an essential portion of meta information for information

Particularly, in such a big data era, demands from industry and academic communities for a precise

acquisition of measurable quantitative information have increased. For example, business investment

companies frequently need to aggregate various sorts of information covering net sales, gross profit,

operating expenses, operating profit, interest expense, net profit before taxes, net income, etc., of the

target companies from their annual reports. The fast-growing medical informatics research also needs

to process a large amount of medical texts to analyze the dose of medicine, the eligibility criteria of

clinical trial, the phenotype characters of patients, the lab tests in clinical records, etc . All these

demands either in industry or in medical research require the accurate and consistent extraction and

representation of measurable quantitative information for automated processing, computation, and

However, in the IR and NLP areas, there is no standardized way of extracting and representing

measurable quantitative information currently available. Each application system developed in

industrial sectors has hitherto used its own format to annotate measurable quantitative information.

A flexible, interoperable, and standardized measurable quantitative information representation format

for IR and NLP tasks to work with many different application systems is called for. The standard SemAF-

MQI specifies an annotation scheme with an XML-based representation format for the annotation of

quantitative information, which consists of numeric quantities, units, associated with various types of

It represents measurable quantitative information based on commonly used XML structures. The

representation standard aims to provide an easy-to-use and universal specification of the annotation

format of measurable quantitative information required to unify the data representation, assist