[Crm-sig] superproperty vs subproperty ISSUE?
Christian-Emil Ore
c.e.s.ore at iln.uio.no
Tue Apr 26 14:37:06 EEST 2011
Dear all,
As a preparation of a lecture I gave some weeks ago, I closely studied
the Danish WordNet and found some peculiarities due to to freely
inheritance of properties
Glossary:
mand = man
mandfolk = men (collective)
person = person
gruppe = group
inngår i = is_a_member_of
mand ISA person
mandfolk ISA group
person inngår i gruppe
etc.
In English:
man ISA person
men ISA group
person is_a_member_of group
With unrestricted inheritance of properties of a superclass we get
man is_a_member_of men (OK)
person is_a_member_of men (not OK)
The latter implies that any person can be a member of men, even my
little daughter. This is clearly ontological nonsense.
I discussed this with the editor of the Danish Wordnet, Bolette
Pedersen, and the inheritance system had been discussed in their group,
but apparently no solution had been found.
In a logical/mathamatical setting it is evident that if
f: A -> B and
B' a subset of B, then one cannot in general assume that
f: A -> B' is well defined for all a in A.
*************
CRM:
In CRM there are no restrictions on inheritance of properties. So the
subclass hierarchy has to be/been designed with care so that the model
is not turned into expressed nonsense.
My questions are: Is this restriction a problem? Should a mechanism for
filtering/restricting property inheritance be introduced? (The current
subproperty is not imposing any restriction see the quite from the
introduction below).
regards,
Christian-Emil
A subproperty is a property that is a specialization of another property
(its superproperty). Specialization or IsA relationship means that:
1. all instances of the subproperty are also instances of its
superproperty,
2. the intension of the subproperty extends the intension of the
superproperty, i.e. its traits are more restrictive than that of its
superproperty,
3. the domain of the subproperty is the same as the domain of its
superproperty or a subclass of that domain,
4. the range of the subproperty is the same as the range of its
superproperty or a subclass of that range,
5. the subproperty inherits the definition of all of the properties
declared for its superproperty without exceptions (strict inheritance),
in addition to having none, one or more properties of its own.
A subproperty can have more than one immediate superproperty and
consequently inherits the properties of all of its superproperties
(multiple inheritance). The IsA relationship or specialization between
two or more properties gives rise to the structure we call a property
hierarchy. The IsA relationship is transitive and may not be cyclic.
Some object-oriented languages, such as C++, have no equivalent to the
specialization of properties.
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