Re: Assertions vs. declarations

On Mar 29, 2008, at 5:13 PM, Marco Colombetti wrote:

> Thank you, Bijan.
>
> In "The even more irresistible etc." it is said that "the roles  
> knows, hasSibling, and properPartOf, should be *declared* as,  
> respectively, reflexive, irreflexive, and antisymmetric." (I think  
> I found other examples of this use of "declare," but I don't  
> remember where.) In the rest of the paper, however, reflexivity  
> axioms etc. are called "role assertions."

So they didn't call them "declarations". Seems a harmless stylistic  
choice to me (i would find calling them declarations more  
objectionable). I don't much care for "role assertion", but oh well.

(Consider "should be asserted as". That just doesn't scan well.)

> I agree that (Tbox/Rbox) "axiom" is the correct term, and that  
> "(class/property) assertion" should be reserved to Abox axioms, but  
> it would be useful to have a more specialized term that covers  
> exactly those property axioms that are called "role assertions" in  
> the above mentioned paper.
>
> Any suggestion?

I don't think it's all that useful, esp. if one is trying to rigidly  
distinguishing it from e.g., subproperty axioms. They are all part of  
the RBox.

But coin your own. I sincerely we'll get much convergence. (See the  
use of 'role' and 'property' the latter which is in conflict with the  
common use of property to also include unary predicates.)

Cheers,
Bijan.

Received on Saturday, 29 March 2008 17:36:05 UTC