---
title: "Computational ontologies of parthood, componenthood, and containment"
authors:
  - "Thomas Bittner"
  - "Maureen Donnelly"
doi: ""
url: "https://ijcai.org/proceedings/2005/91"
pdf: "https://ijcai.org/proceedings/2005/0091.pdf"
venue: "Proceedings of the Nineteenth International Joint Conference on Artificial Intelligence"
year: 2005
pages: "382-386"
track: ""
keywords:
---

# Computational ontologies of parthood, componenthood, and containment

Thomas Bittner, Maureen Donnelly

*Proceedings of the Nineteenth International Joint Conference on Artificial Intelligence*, pages 382-386.

## Abstract

Parthood, componenthood, and containment relations are commonly assumed in biomedical ontologies and terminology systems, but are not usually clearly distinguished from another. This paper contributes towards a unified theory of parthood, componenthood, and containment relations. Our goal in this is to clarify distinctions between these relations as well as principles governing their interrelations. We first develop a theory of these relations in first order predicate logic and then discuss how description logics can be used to capture some important aspects of the first order theory.