Ontology has been proposed as a solution to the 'Tower of Babel' problem that threatens the semantic interoperability of information systems constructed independently for the same domain. In information systems research and applications, ontologies are often implemented by formalizing the meanings of words from natural languages. However, words in different natural languages sometimes subdivide the same domain of reality in terms of different conceptual categories. If the words and their associated concepts in two natural languages, or even in two terminological (...) traditions within the same language, do not have common referents in the real world, an ontology based on word meanings will inherit the 'Tower of Babel' problem from the languages involved, rather than solve it. In this paper we present evidence from a preliminary comparison of landscape terms in English with those in the Yindjibarndi language of northwestern Australia demonstrating that this problem is not just hypothetical. Some possible solutions are suggested. (shrink)

This volume collects the papers presented at the 9th edition of the Formal Ontology in Information Systems conference, FOIS 2016, held July 6–9, 2016, in Annecy, France. As in the previous editions, FOIS 2016 included keynote addresses, full paper presentations, an Ontology Competition, an Early Career Symposium in its scientific program and was preceded by the Interdisciplinary Summer School on Ontological Analysis, now at its third edition and held June 27–July 1 in Bolzano-Bozen, Italy.