Sweetening WORDNET with DOLCE

Entities The main characteristic of abstract entities is that they do not have spatial or temporal qualities, and they are not qualities themselves. The only class of abstract entities we consider in the current version of DOLCE is that of quality regions (or simply regions). Quality spaces are special kinds of quality regions, acting as mereological sums of all the regions related to a certain quality type. The other examples of abstract entities reported in figure 3 (sets and propositions) are only indicative. Further Distinctions Before discussing further distinctions within the basic DOLCE categories, let us informally introduce some useful definitions based on three notions: (1) mereological invariance (obvious for time-indexed parthood), (2) unity (discussed informally in Guarino and Welty [2002]) and formalized in Gangemi et al. [2001]), and (3) ontological dependence (adapted from Thomasson [1999]). An endurant is mereologically constant iff all its parts remain the same during its life and mereologically invariant iff they remain the same across all possible worlds. For example, as we see, amounts of matter are taken as mereologically invariant (all their parts are essential parts). A particular x is an essential whole if there is a suitable relation R such that necessarily, x is a maximal mereological sum of entities that are all bound by R. For example, a piece of matter is a topological whole whose parts are bound together by a relation of topological connection; a bikini is a functional whole, whose parts are bound together by a functional relationship. A particular x is specifically constantly dependent (SCD) on another particular y iff at any time t, x can’t be present at t unless y is also present at t. For example, a person might be specifically constantly dependent on his / her brain. A particular x is generically constantly dependent (GCD) on a property φ iff at any time t, x can’t be present at t unless a certain instance y of φ is also present at t. For example, a person might constantly be generically dependent on the property of having a heart. Kinds of Endurant Within endurants, we distinguish between physical and nonphysical endurants, according to whether they have direct spatial qualities. Within physical endurants, the main categories are amount of matter, physical object, and feature. Articles