Meronomy

A meronomy is a type of hierarchy that deals with part-whole relationships, in contrast to a taxonomy whose categorisation is based on discrete sets. These conceptual structures are used in linguistics and computer science, with applications in biology. The part-whole relationship is sometimes referred to as HAS-A, and corresponds to object composition in Object-Oriented Programming.^[1] The study of meronomy is known as mereology, and in linguistics a meronym is the name given to a constituent part of, the substance of, or a member of something. X is a meronym of Y if X is a part of Y.^[2]

Example

Cars have parts Engine, Headlight, Wheel
Engines have parts Crankcase, Carburetor
Headlights have parts headlight bulb, reflector

Meronomies in Knowledge Representation

In formal terms, in the context of knowledge representation and ontologies, a meronomy is a partial ordering of concept types by the part-whole relation.^[3]

The classic study of parts and wholes, mereology, has three axioms^[4]: the part-of relation is

• Transitive - "parts of parts are parts of the whole" - If A is part of B and B is part of C, then A is part of C
• Reflexive - "Everything is part of itself" - A is part of A
• Antisymmetric - "Nothing is a part of its parts" - if A is part of B and A != B then B is not part of A.

Meronomies may be represented in Semantic Web languages such as OWL and SKOS.

References

1. ^ Object-Oriented Programming Concept
2. ^ Glossary of WordNet Terminology
3. ^ Glossary
4. ^ Simple part-whole relations in OWL Ontologies

External links

• Introduction to WordNet: An On-line Lexical Database (pdf)
• W3C SKOS Home Page