I am reworking the semantics of claims (statements about behavior dispositions or behavior events). In the existing database (mysql arachadmin on figshare), there is a table called ‘participant_type’. This table has been renamed to ‘expression_type’ in the updated psql database. This is a better name since the values are really types of OWL expressions (e.g., some, individual, conjunction, etc.). This morning I am adding a new table called ‘participant_type’ which has two values: individual or class. A participant is either an individual or a class, although there are some funny, potentially confusing cases. For example, some portion of tissue that is part_of an individual or an area that is part_of the surface of an individual. In these cases, the portion of tissue or surface area may not constitute the entirety of the part (so not comprising an anatomical structure). For the moment, I am thinking of modeling this as a class (though certainly not a universal) that still can participate in an individual event. The other other seems to be to generate an anonymous individual as a instance of that class, but that seems even more wrong. Dispositions of individuals towards a class (e.g. ‘subject tarantula showed increased consumption of crickets’) seems less problematic – it’s a statement about an individual spider, but not an individual event.
An Arachnolingua Blog 