When a FrameNet-style knowledge description meets an ontological characterization of Fundamental Legal Concepts

The need for bridging the gap between linguistically-oriented knowledge resources (i.e. lexicons) and domain-oriented ones (i.e. ontologies) is acknowledged within both the NLP and the AI&Law community. In this paper we propose to face this need by comparing a FrameNet-style and an ontological characterization of the obligation Fundamental Legal Concept. In particular, we carried out a case-study aimed at investigating whether and to which extent different views on this Fundamental Legal Concept offered by the FrameNet resource can be mapped to an ontological characterization of the complex concept of public function, stemmed from the basic normative position obligation.