Chris Partridge wrote:
> Ed,
>
> I agree we need to be clear.
>
>> it is that one must be clear that:
>> -- is-a -->
>> has importantly different semantics from
>> -- <term> -->
>> where the <term> is anything other than "is-a".
>
> The possible semantic varieties of 'is-a' in natural language are quite well
> known.
>
> It seems to me that you are dealing with the subsumption variety here (Man
> is an Animal - all men are animals).
> (01)
As UML-ites usually think in OO terms including inheritance, "is-a" means
"derives from" i.e. Man derives from Animal (and thus "is-a") and a specific
man is an instance of Man... (02)
> Isn't there another variety that needs also to be considered - the
> instantiation variety. Socrates is a man. (I wonder how the UML-ites will
> diagram this?) (03)
http://hcs.science.uva.nl/usr/Schreiber/docs/owl-uml/owl-individual.jpg (04)
I'm not sure the UML is the langauge of choice to describe all these, but as
Eds suggestion includes talking about language selection, the UML part is not
supposed to be the normative. (05)
If you feel unsure about whether UML copes, can always express the list of
requirements for the expressibility of the language and its accompagnying
graphical representation and go through that checklist to see if UML
disqualifies. (06)
I don't like UML but I think it might be good enough for the non-normative part. (07)
Regards, (08)
-Martin (09)
_________________________________________________________________
Message Archives: http://ontolog.cim3.net/forum/uom-ontology-std/
Subscribe: mailto:uom-ontology-std-join@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
Config/Unsubscribe: http://ontolog.cim3.net/mailman/listinfo/uom-ontology-std/
Shared Files: http://ontolog.cim3.net/file/work/UoM/
Wiki: http://ontolog.cim3.net/cgi-bin/wiki.pl?UoM_Ontology_Standard (010)
|
