This file belongs to the OWL distribution of GFO, cf. http://www.onto-med.de/ontologies/gfo.
-----------------
It comprises a set of selected major and rather stable GFO categories, with the intention to serve as a comprehensible starting point which
1. should be useful for immediate modeling purposes,
2. covers GFO's areas and exhibits outstanding GFO features
3. omits categories of more theoretical character or those which are easily definable
Categories of the third kind will be provided in separate extensions.
-----------------
In some comments, references to documents are used. These refer to several versions of the following report:
Herre, H.; Heller, B.; Burek, P.; Hoehndorf, R.; Loebe, F. & Michalek, H.. General Formal Ontology (GFO): A Foundational Ontology Integrating Objects and Processes. Part I: Basic Principles. Research Group Ontologies in Medicine (Onto-Med), University of Leipzig.
[herre-h-2006--a]: Version 1.0, Onto-Med Report Nr. 8, 01.07.2006
[part1-v1.0.1] Version 1.0.1., Draft, 14.02.2007
Copyright (c) 2006-2008, Regents of the Research Group Ontologies in Medicine (Onto-Med), University of Leipzig, Germany.
All rights reserved.
Redistribution and use in source and binary forms, with or without modification,
are permitted provided that the following conditions are met:
1. Redistributions of source code must retain the above copyright notice, this list
of conditions and the following disclaimer.
2. Redistributions in binary form must reproduce the above copyright notice, this list
of conditions and the following disclaimer in the documentation and/or other
materials provided with the distribution.
3. Neither the name of the Research Group Ontologies in Medicine (Onto-Med), University
of Leipzig nor the names of its contributors may be used to endorse or promote products
derived from this software without specific prior written permission.
THIS SOFTWARE IS PROVIDED BY THE COPYRIGHT HOLDERS AND CONTRIBUTORS "AS IS" AND ANY EXPRESS
OR IMPLIED WARRANTIES, INCLUDING, BUT NOT LIMITED TO, THE IMPLIED WARRANTIES OF MERCHANTABILITY
AND FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE ARE DISCLAIMED. IN NO EVENT SHALL THE COPYRIGHT OWNER OR
CONTRIBUTORS BE LIABLE FOR ANY DIRECT, INDIRECT, INCIDENTAL, SPECIAL, EXEMPLARY, OR CONSEQUENTIAL
DAMAGES (INCLUDING, BUT NOT LIMITED TO, PROCUREMENT OF SUBSTITUTE GOODS OR SERVICES; LOSS OF USE,
DATA, OR PROFITS; OR BUSINESS INTERRUPTION) HOWEVER CAUSED AND ON ANY THEORY OF LIABILITY, WHETHER
IN CONTRACT, STRICT LIABILITY, OR TORT (INCLUDING NEGLIGENCE OR OTHERWISE) ARISING IN ANY WAY OUT
OF THE USE OF THIS SOFTWARE, EVEN IF ADVISED OF THE POSSIBILITY OF SUCH DAMAGE.
Version 1.0 ($Revision: 1.13 $)
Abstract has-part is the inverse of the abstract part-of relationship.
[FL, 2008-02-28]
abstract has-part
The abstract part-of relation is denoted by p(x,y); the argument-types of this relation are not specified, i.e. we allow arbitrary entities to be arguments. We assume that p(x,y) satisfies the condition of a partial ordering, .i.e. the following axioms: reflexivity, antisymmetry and transitivity.
[RH, 2006 based on herre-h-2006--a, p.44]
abstract part-of
"Boundary of" connects boundaries to the entities which they bind.
[FL, 2008-02-28]
boundary of
Coincidence is a relationship between space boundaries or time boundaries, respectively. Intuitively, two such boundaries are coincident if and only if they occupy “the same” space, or point in time, but they are still different entities.
[herre-h-2006--a, p.46]
coincides with
This relation captures the notion of existential dependence.
[RH, 2006]
depends on
In the GFO-account of persistence, perpetuants exhibit presentials, i.e., the former ``exist through'' the latter at the time where the presential exists. With respect to persistants, presentials instantiate persistants.
[FL, 2008-07-10]
exhibits
Presentials exist at a single time boundary.
exists at
A presential is framed by a spatial region if the location which the presential occupies is a spatial part of that region.
[FL, 2008-02-27, based on herre-h-2006--a, p. 21]
framed by
A spatial region frames a presential if the location which the presential occupies is a spatial part of that region.
[FL, 2008-02-27, based on herre-h-2006--a, p. 21]
frames
The has-boundary relation connects entities with their boundaries, e.g. chronoids to time boundaries, topoids to surfaces, etc.
[FL, 2008-02-28]
has boundary
Temporal regions have exactly one extremal left time boundary.
[FL, 2008-02-28]
has left time boundary
The inverse of part-of.
[FL, 2008-02-28]
has-part
Temporally extended entities have participants.
[FL, 2008-02-28]
has participant
The inverse of proper part-of.
[FL 2008-02-28]
has proper part
Entities can have properties. In GFO, properties are individualized, and "has property" links an entity to its particular property.
[FL, 2008-02-28]
has property
Temporal regions have exactly one extremal right time boundary.
[FL, 2008-02-28]
has right time boundary
The inverse of role of.
[FL, 06.07.2008]
has role
Space entities may have spatial boundaries.
[FL, 2008-02-28]
has spatial boundary
The inverse of temporal part-of.
[FL, 2008-03-13]
has temporal part
Temporal regions have temporal boundaries.
[FL, 2008-02-28]
has time boundary
The specific relation from a symbol structure (a category in GFO) to an entity seen as an occurrence of that symbol structure, as a token of it.
[FL 2008-02-28]
has token
The instantiation relation holds between an entity and a category. Put differently, the category is predicated of that entity, the entity is the instance of that category. Entities of all kinds can be instances, which results in categories which have individuals as instances or categories which may have categories as instances, such as "species".
[FL, 2008-02-28]
instance of
Inverse of instance of.
[FL, 2008-02-28]
instantiated by
Left boundary of a temporal region.
[FL, 2008-02-28]
left boundary of
An entity is necessary for another one if the latter is required for the former to exist.
[FL 2008-02-28]
necessary for
Presentials exist in space, and the space entity occupied by a presential is uniquely determined (where a fixed granularity is assumed).
[FL, 2008-02-27 based on herre-h-2006--a, p.21]
occupied by
Presentials exist in space, and the space entity occupied by a presential is uniquely determined (where a fixed granularity is assumed).
[FL, 2008-02-27 based on herre-h-2006--a, p.21]
occupies
The relation between parts and wholes.
The union of several domain-specific part-of relationships not contained explicitly in gfo-basic, like spatial part-of or part-of among material structures.
[FL, 2008-03-13]
part of
Intuitively, objects participate in processes, for instance. In GFO, participation accommodates the GFO approach to persistence, i.e., at least presentials can participate in processes. Moreover, it is useful to extend the notion of participation also to other temporally extended entities.
[FL, 2008-02-28]
participates in
The inverse of plays-role.
[FL, 06.07.2008]
played by
Entities can play roles with respect to some other entity which provides a context for that role. The plays-role relationship links an entity with its role.
[FL, 2008-02-28]
plays role
If, for instance, a process happens during a certain time, i.e., some temporal region, that region is the projection of that process (to time).
[FL, 2008-02-28]
projection of
Links an entity to its temporal extension.
Entities which are in time are related to the corresponding temporal regions by projects to. Moreover, entities related to others which are in time may likewise project to temporal regions.
[FL, 2008-02-28]
projects to
The irreflexive variant of part-of.
[FL 2008-02-28]
proper part of
Links properties to their bearers.
[FL, 2008-02-28]
property of
Right boundary of a temporal region.
[FL, 2008-02-28]
right boundary of
The relationship between a role and its context. Typically, the nature of the context determines that of the roles, which are in some sense a part of that context. E.g., processes form the context for certain roles (processual roles), such that the latter are recognizable as processes.
[FL, 2008-02-28]
role of
Spatial boundaries may bound spatial entities.
[FL, 2008-02-28]
spatial boundary of
A part-of relationship between two time entities. Time-boundaries cannot have parts.
[FL, 2008-03-13]
temporal part-of
Time boundaries bound temporal regions.
[FL, 2008-02-28]
time boundary of
Inverse of the has token relations.
[FL, 2008-02-28]
token of
gfo:Abstract
Abstract individuals are independent from time and space (they are not in time and space).
Examples: the number "2" or pi.
[RH, 2006]
Abstract
gfo:Amount_of_substrate
An amount of substrate is a presential, namely the matter of some material object. Amounts of substrate follow different identity criteria than material objects, i.e., they instantiate different persistants.
Appropriate connotations of "amount of substrate" are "stuff" (in the common understanding) or "mass term" (in linguistics).
[FL, 2008-03-13]
Amount of substrate
gfo:Category
Categories satisfy the following conditions: (1) Categories can be instantiated; (2) Categories can be predicated of other entities.
Categories are defined intensional-with-an-s. They are, therefore, closely related to language.
[RH, 2006]
Category
gfo:Change
A change refers to a structure centered around two presentials, which are boundaries of one and the same process. If they exist at coinciding time boundaries, the change comes close to notions in the literature like "punctual" or "instantaneous event" as well as "moment" (in a temporal reading). Alternatively, the presentials may be boundaries at the opposite ends of a process of arbitrary extension.
Either notion of change is relative to contradictory conditions between which a transition takes place. These conditions refer to some collection of pairwise disjoint subcategories of one category.
[FL, 2008-03-13]
Change
[part1-v1.0.1, p. 30]
1
1
gfo:Chronoid
Chronoids are entities sui generis.
Every chronoid has exactly two extremal and
infinitely many inner time boundaries which are
equivalently called time-points.
Chronoid
gfo:Concept
Concepts are categories that are expressed by linguistic signs and are present in someone’s mind.
[herre-h-2006--a, p.6]
Concept
gfo:Concrete
Concrete individuals have a relation to time or space (they are in time and space).
Concrete
gfo:Continuous_change
A continuous change is a change such that
(1) its process boundaries exist at non-coincident time-boundaries,
(2) any two non-coincident process boundaries of its process are distinguished with respect to the reference category and
(3) any two coincident process boundaries exhibit no such distinction, i.e., no discrete changes of the same reference category.
[FL, 2008-03-13]
Continuous change
[part1-v.1.0.1, p.30-31]
gfo:Continuous_process
A process is a continuous process if it can be partitioned such that the partition contains only states or processes within a continuous change. Those states and changes must be based on the same reference category.
[FL, 2008-03-13]
Continuous process
gfo:Discrete_change
A discrete change is a change at coincident time boundaries, for which a recognizable difference exists. That means, there is a category with two disjoint sub-categories such that each of these is instantiated by exactly one of the process boundaries in the change.
[FL, 2008-03-13]
Discrete change
gfo:Discrete_process
Discrete processes have a partitioning into an alteration of discrete changes and states.
[FL, 2008-03-13]
Discrete process
gfo:Entity
Everything is an entity, i.e., entity is the category which everything instantiates.
[FL, 2008-02-27]
We use the term entity for everything that exists where existence is understood in the broadest sense.
[part1-v1.0.1, p.5]
Entity
gfo:Event
Events are processual structures comprising a process, and one of its extremal process boundaries. The latter must further satisfy a condition which differs from the condition applicable to all other boundaries of the process. I.e., the extremal boundary instantiates a sub-category of the event's reference category which is disjoint with that category instantiated by the remaining process boundaries. [FL, 2008-03-13]
Event
[part1-v1.0.1, p.31-32]
gfo:History
Histories are processual structures which consist of a process and a number of presentials which are constituents of the boundaries of that process.
[FL, 2008-03-13]
History
gfo:Individual
Individuals are entities that are not instantiable.
[herre-h-2006--a, p.19]
Individual
gfo:Left_time_boundary
see time boundary description
[FL, 2008-02-27]
Left time boundary
gfo:Line
Surfaces are bound by lines.
[FL, 2008-07-27]
Line
gfo:Material_boundary
A material entity which depends on a material object and occupies a spatial boundary.
[FL, 2008-02-27]
Material boundary
gfo:Material_object
A material structure is an individual which satisfies the following conditions:
it is a presential, it occupies space, it is a bearer of qualities, but other entities cannot have
it as quality, and it consists of an amount of substrate, and it instantiates a persistant ("has identity").
Material object
gfo:Occurrent
The category of occurrents comprises several categories that can be derived from processes.
[FL, 2008-03-06 based on part1-v.1.0.1, p.30]
NOTE: In earlier versions, "Occurrent" denoted the category named "Processual Structure" herein.
[FL, 2008-03-13]
Occurrent
gfo:Perpetuant
A perpetuant is a concrete individual which persists through time and exhibits presentials.
[FL, 06.03.2008]
Perpetuant
gfo:Point
Lines are bound by points.
[FL, 2008-02-27]
Point
gfo:Presential
A presential exists wholly at exactly one time boundary.
Presential
gfo:Process
Processes are directly in time, they develop over and unfold in time. Processes have characteristics which cannot be captured by a collection of time boundaries. In particular, processes exhibit internal coherence.
[FL, 2008-03-13]
Process
gfo:Processual_Structure
The category of processual structures centers around the more intuitive notion of processes. It captures processes themselves and occurrents, i.e., primarily structures of several other kinds that can be derived from processes.
[FL, 2008-03-13 based on part1-v1.0.1, p.30]
Processual Structure
gfo:Processual_role
A processual role corresponds to the manner in which a single participant behaves in some process.
[herre-h-2006--a, p.38]
Processual roles are roles with a process as context, and they are dependent processes.
[FL, 2008-02-27]
Processual role
gfo:Property
A property is a dependent entity which another entities has, i.e., that entity exhibits its property. Other common terms for property in natural language are characteristic, feature, quality, etc.
[FL, 2008-02-27]
Property
gfo:Relational_role
A relational role corresponds to the way in which an argument participates in some relation.
[herre-h-2006--a, p.38]
Relational role
gfo:Relator
A relator mediates between or connects entities. It is a dependent entity which depends on those entities connected.
[FL, 2008-03-13]
Relator
gfo:Right_time_boundary
see time boundary description
[FL, 2008-02-27]
Right time boundary
gfo:Role
Role
A role corresponds to the involvement of some entity (the player of the role) within another entity (the context of the role).
Examples of role terms: student, patient, runner, reader, factor.
[FL, 2008-02-27]
gfo:Social_role
A social role corresponds to the involvement of a social object within some society.
[herre-h-2006--a, p.38]
Social role
gfo:Space
Spatial entities in GFO are analyzed according to the ideas of Franz Brentano. Starting from connected three-dimensional entitites (topoids), related spatial entities can be distinguished.
[FL, 2008-02-27]
Space entity
[herre-h-2006--a, sect. 5.2]
gfo:Space_time
A space-time-entity is something in which concrete entities can be located.
[FL, 2008-02-27]
Space time entity
gfo:Spatial_boundary
Boundaries of regions are surfaces, boundaries of
surfaces are lines, and boundaries of lines are
points. As in the case of time-boundaries, spatial
boundaries have no independent existence, i.e. they depend on the
spatial entity of which they are boundaries.
Spatial boundary
gfo:Spatial_region
Space regions are mereological sums of topoids.
Spatial region
gfo:State
A process is a state with respect to a category iff every of its process boundaries instantiates that category.
[FL, 2008-03-13]
State
[part1-v1.0.1, p.34]
gfo:Surface
Topoids are bounded by surfaces.
[FL, 2008-02-27]
Surface
gfo:Symbol_structure
Symbolic structures are signs or texts that may be instantiated by tokens.
[herre-h-2006--a, p.6]
Symbol structure
gfo:Temporal_region
Time Regions are defined as the mereological sum of chronoids,
i.e. time regions may consist of non-connected intervals of time.
Temporal region
gfo:Time
The time model of GFO is based on Brentano and the glass continuum of Allen&Hayes.
Time entity
gfo:Time_boundary
Time boundaries depend on a chronoids and can coincide.
Left time boundaries, if viewed from the perspective of bounding a specific chronoid, are those which are earlier than any inner or right time boundary of that chronoid. On the other hand, within a pair of coincident time boundaries, a left time boundary is later than the right time boundary in that pair.
[FL, 2008-02-27]
Time boundary
gfo:Topoid
Topoids are connected compact regions of space. They have spatial boundaries.
Topoid
gfo:Universal
Universals are immanent categories. They exist in re.
[FL, 2008-02-27]
Universal
owl:Thing
Version 1.0 ($Revision: 1.13 $)
This file belongs to the OWL distribution of GFO, cf. http://www.onto-med.de/ontologies/gfo.
-----------------
It comprises a set of selected major and rather stable GFO categories, with the intention to serve as a comprehensible starting point which
1. should be useful for immediate modeling purposes,
2. covers GFO's areas and exhibits outstanding GFO features
3. omits categories of more theoretical character or those which are easily definable
Categories of the third kind will be provided in separate extensions.
-----------------
In some comments, references to documents are used. These refer to several versions of the following report:
Herre, H.; Heller, B.; Burek, P.; Hoehndorf, R.; Loebe, F. & Michalek, H.. General Formal Ontology (GFO): A Foundational Ontology Integrating Objects and Processes. Part I: Basic Principles. Research Group Ontologies in Medicine (Onto-Med), University of Leipzig.
[herre-h-2006--a]: Version 1.0, Onto-Med Report Nr. 8, 01.07.2006
[part1-v1.0.1] Version 1.0.1., Draft, 14.02.2007
Copyright (c) 2006-2008, Regents of the Research Group Ontologies in Medicine (Onto-Med), University of Leipzig, Germany.
All rights reserved.
Redistribution and use in source and binary forms, with or without modification,
are permitted provided that the following conditions are met:
1. Redistributions of source code must retain the above copyright notice, this list
of conditions and the following disclaimer.
2. Redistributions in binary form must reproduce the above copyright notice, this list
of conditions and the following disclaimer in the documentation and/or other
materials provided with the distribution.
3. Neither the name of the Research Group Ontologies in Medicine (Onto-Med), University
of Leipzig nor the names of its contributors may be used to endorse or promote products
derived from this software without specific prior written permission.
THIS SOFTWARE IS PROVIDED BY THE COPYRIGHT HOLDERS AND CONTRIBUTORS "AS IS" AND ANY EXPRESS
OR IMPLIED WARRANTIES, INCLUDING, BUT NOT LIMITED TO, THE IMPLIED WARRANTIES OF MERCHANTABILITY
AND FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE ARE DISCLAIMED. IN NO EVENT SHALL THE COPYRIGHT OWNER OR
CONTRIBUTORS BE LIABLE FOR ANY DIRECT, INDIRECT, INCIDENTAL, SPECIAL, EXEMPLARY, OR CONSEQUENTIAL
DAMAGES (INCLUDING, BUT NOT LIMITED TO, PROCUREMENT OF SUBSTITUTE GOODS OR SERVICES; LOSS OF USE,
DATA, OR PROFITS; OR BUSINESS INTERRUPTION) HOWEVER CAUSED AND ON ANY THEORY OF LIABILITY, WHETHER
IN CONTRACT, STRICT LIABILITY, OR TORT (INCLUDING NEGLIGENCE OR OTHERWISE) ARISING IN ANY WAY OUT
OF THE USE OF THIS SOFTWARE, EVEN IF ADVISED OF THE POSSIBILITY OF SUCH DAMAGE.
Version 1.0 ($Revision: 1.13 $)