Building Ontology for Nigerian Tribes and Languages

Abstract

The cultural heritage of the Nigerian people is gradually going extinct as
the growing generation is being brought up to speak foreign languages at
the neglect of their native or indigenous language. Native languages
which remain the most viable cultural identity factor must therefore be
preserved. Preservation of our culture definitely includes the
preservation of its domain knowledge. Ontology is a veritable tool in
computing for representing, and thus preserving, domain knowledge for
both human and machine processing. This paper builds a foundational
ontology for Nigerian languages and tribes (ONLT). ONLT was built
using the Noy and McGuinness methodology and specifically created
using the Protégé 3.5 OWL editor. The ONLT was built on, and
evaluated by queries; using a set of competency questions. The ONTL
was found to strongly align with its purpose of representing domain
knowledge and thus provides required information on Nigerian tribes,
and languages.