On the Evolution of Ontological Signatures

Giorgos Flouris

ISTI-CNR
Via G. Moruzzi, 1,
56124, Pisa, Italy
flouris@isti.cnr.it

Abstract
During ontology evolution, we are often faced with operations 
requiring the addition/removal of some ontological element 
(e.g., a concept) to/from the signature. Such operations deal 
with the ontological signature and are fundamentally different 
from operations that deal with the axiomatic part of the ontology, 
because they don’t affect our knowledge on the domain but the 
non-logical symbols of the logic used to represent our knowledge 
on the domain. The consequences of this observation have been 
generally disregarded in the relevant literature. This paper 
attempts to fill this gap by introducing the concept of "change 
levels" and discussing the issues emerging from the different 
nature of the two types of operations. Furthermore, two alternative 
formalizations are described, which allow both types of operations 
to be represented at the same level, and, consequently, be 
considered of the same type.