Ma, Jixin (2007) Ontological considerations of time, meta-predicates and temporal propositions. Applied Ontology, 2 (1). pp. 37-66. ISSN 1570-5838

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Abstract

A natural approach to representing and reasoning about temporal propositions (i.e., statements with time-dependent truth-values) is to associate them with time elements. In the literature, there are three choices regarding the primitive for the ontology of time: (1) instantaneous points, (2) durative intervals and (3) both points and intervals. Problems may arise when one conflates different views of temporal structure and questions whether some certain types of temporal propositions can be validly and meaningfully associated with different time elements. In this paper, we shall summarize an ontological glossary with respect to time elements, and diversify a wider range of meta-predicates for ascribing temporal propositions to time elements. Based on these, we shall also devise a versatile categorization of temporal propositions, which can subsume those representative categories proposed in the literature, including that of Vendler, of McDermott, of Allen, of Shoham, of Galton and of Terenziani and Torasso. It is demonstrated that the new categorization of propositions, together with the proposed range of meta-predicates, provides the expressive power for modeling some typical temporal terms/phenomena, such as starting-instant, stopping-instant, dividing-instant, instigation, termination and intermingling etc.

Item Type:	Article
Uncontrolled Keywords:	ontological classification, time elements, meta-predicates, temporal propositions
Subjects:	Q Science > QA Mathematics > QA75 Electronic computers. Computer science
Pre-2014 Departments:	School of Computing & Mathematical Sciences School of Computing & Mathematical Sciences > Computer & Computational Science Research Group School of Computing & Mathematical Sciences > Department of Computer Science
Related URLs:	Publisher Organisation
Last Modified:	14 Oct 2016 09:03
URI:	http://gala.gre.ac.uk/id/eprint/1081

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