The Impact of the TelicAtelic Dichotomy on Temporal Databases

摘要

The telictelic distinction, first introduced by Aristotle in his Categories [1], has a long tradition in the Western culture. Prior research in philosophy, linguistics, cognitive science, artificial intelligence and other areas suggests the need to differentiate between temporal facts with goal-related semantics (i.e., telic) from those that are intrinsically devoid of goalculmination (i.e., atelic). Surprisingly, such a need has been quite neglected in the area of temporal databases (TDBs). However, the telictelic distinction has deep effects on TDB data and query semantics, and on conceptual modelling.