The current ontologies focus on objects only, properties are
not structured into repositories and relations are now defined in a funny
idiosyncretic way that does not allow integration of
ontologies. The contained in, or partof relation, etc. too are very trivial and
uninteresting from a NL translation point of view.
Your hint about structuring properties
into repositories is an interesting one. Other than the very simple clustering
approach of FCA (formal concept analysis), I don’t know of approaches
that START with properties, other than my own stuff ( www.englishlogickernel.com ) and
partition properties into groups.
Property groupings, with groups including
both methods and values, seem to be a better way to characterize reality chunks
than just by inventing new properties every time you add another new concept to
stand alone from the others. OO diagrams, UML etc, help developers think
about interactions among objects, not just about the objects. Programmers
invented “packages” to try to manage groups objects into the proper
clusters for an application.
A clustering of properties, AKA a class in
FCA terms, cross producted with a cluster of things, AKA a package in
programming terms, is a method for building coherent, collimated capabilities
into a transferable unit. But there hasn’t really been enough
thought given to how a package encompasses an ontology, IMHO. If anyone
can provide a reference URL or two to the contrary, please do so.
TIA,