Terminology Service for NFDI4Health

denotes

Go to external page http://purl.obolibrary.org/obo/IAO_0000219


A primitive, instance-level, relation obtaining between an information content entity and some portion of reality. Denotation is what happens when someone creates an information content entity E in order to specifically refer to something. The only relation between E and the thing is that E can be used to 'pick out' the thing. This relation connects those two together. Freedictionary.com sense 3: To signify directly; refer to specifically

Property info

definition source

Conversations with Barry Smith, Werner Ceusters, Bjoern Peters, Michel Dumontier, Melanie Courtot, James Malone, Bill Hogan

editor note

2009-11-10 Alan Ruttenberg. Old definition said the following to emphasize the generic nature of this relation. We no longer have 'specifically denotes', which would have been primitive, so make this relation primitive. g denotes r =def r is a portion of reality there is some c that is a concretization of g every c that is a concretization of g specifically denotes r

example of usage

A person's name denotes the person. A variable name in a computer program denotes some piece of memory. Lexically equivalent strings can denote different things, for instance "Alan" can denote different people. In each case of use, there is a case of the denotation relation obtaining, between "Alan" and the person that is being named.

term editor

person:Alan Ruttenberg

Property relations

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