RE: Xtreme Punning

> I think this kind of punning comes very natural.
> 
> Snoopy a Dog.
> Dog a Species.
> Charlie_Brown Dog Snoopy.
> 
> All of them feel right, and are also allowed in both RDF and OWL with 
> punning.
> 
> Father rdfs:range Father.
> Anakin a Father.
> Luke Father Anakin.

OK, but there is an important difference between these
two cases. 

In the first case, the thing denoted by the first occurrence 
of Dog is the same thing as the thing denoted by the second 
occurrence of Dog, namely the class Dog, which happens to be 
an instance (not really an "individual" in the strict sense 
of a thing that has no instances/extension). 

In the second case, the thing denoted by the first occurrence 
of Father is a property, while the thing denoted by the second 
occurrence of Father is a (role) class. Clearly, these two
things are closely related to each other, but they are not
the same.

Another important case of the same thing appearing in two 
different forms (or sntactical categories) are functional 
properties which can appear both as property predicates and 
as function symbols (though not in OWL).

However, it seems that this difference in using the same 
name for different syntactic categories once denoting the 
same thing and once denoting distinct things, cannot be
captured by OWL 1.1 punning, where they are always denoting
different things.

-Gerd

---------------------------------------------
Gerd Wagner
http://oxygen.informatik.tu-cottbus.de/IT
Email: G.Wagner@tu-cottbus.de
 

Received on Friday, 11 January 2008 12:10:13 UTC