A Logical and Ontological Framework for Compositional Concepts of Objects and Properties

摘要

In order to formalize complex and compositional concepts, we propose a logical framework based on an upper ontology constructed from the composition of basic concepts such as properties and objects. In particular, ontologically distinct compositions (called ontological compositions) that are not easily defined by using ISA and PART-OF relations are classified into characterizing, temporal, and spatial compositions (e.g., 'red face' and 'today'). In this paper, we precisely model such ontological compositions by using monadic second-order logic; properties and objects are expressed as predicates, and attributes are expressed as predicates of predicates. The proposed approach provides a novel technique for the classification of attributes as higher-order concepts, and it clarifies illegal compositions of properties and objects and the uniqueness of temporal attributes. Moreover, our composition ontology is described by a set of RDF triples using the metamodeling of concepts in RDF Schema.