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International Conference on Knowledge Engineering and Knowledge Management

EKAW 2002: Knowledge Engineering and Knowledge Management: Ontologies and the Semantic Web pp 301–316Cite as

Attribute Meta-properties for Formal Ontological Analysis

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Part of the book series: Lecture Notes in Computer Science ((LNAI,volume 2473))

Abstract

Formal ontological analysis is a methodology that uses ideas from philosophy in order to guide the process of building ontologies with a correct and as untangled a structure as possible.

This paper presents an ontology model that aims to facilitate formal ontological analysis, by providing a set of meta-properties which characterise the behaviour of concept properties in a concept definition, to provide a richer semantics of the concept. We describe concepts in terms of their attributes (characterising features) and we also describe the role played by these features in the concept definition: whether they are prototypical or exceptional; whether they are permitted to change over time, and if so, how often this happens; how likely is a concept to show these features, etc. We show that these meta-properties, besides enriching concept descriptions, can be used to determine whether the notions of identity and rigidity hold, thus supporting in part the OntoClean [31] methodology.

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Author information

Authors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Computer Science, University of Liverpool, Chadwick Building, Liverpool, L69 7ZF, UK

    Valentina Tamma & Trevor J. M. Bench Capon

Authors
  1. Valentina Tamma
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  2. Trevor J. M. Bench Capon
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Editor information

Editors and Affiliations

  1. Universidad Politécnica de Madrid, Campus de Montegancedo, s/n, 28660, Boadilla del Monte, Madrid, Spain

    Asunción Gómez-Pérez

  2. Intelligent Software Components, S.A. (iSOCO), Francisca Delgado, 11 - 2∘, 28108, Alcobendas, Madrid, Spain

    V. Richard Benjamins

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© 2002 Springer-Verlag Berlin Heidelberg

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Tamma, V., Capon, T.J.M.B. (2002). Attribute Meta-properties for Formal Ontological Analysis. In: Gómez-Pérez, A., Benjamins, V.R. (eds) Knowledge Engineering and Knowledge Management: Ontologies and the Semantic Web. EKAW 2002. Lecture Notes in Computer Science(), vol 2473. Springer, Berlin, Heidelberg. https://doi.org/10.1007/3-540-45810-7_28

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/3-540-45810-7_28

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  • Publisher Name: Springer, Berlin, Heidelberg

  • Print ISBN: 978-3-540-44268-4

  • Online ISBN: 978-3-540-45810-4

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