Rethinking meaning and ontologies from the perspective of ontological units

Abstract

Ontologies enable knowledge sharing and interdisciplinary collaboration by providing standardized, structured vocabularies for diverse communities. While logical axioms are a cornerstone of ontology design, natural language elements such as annotations are equally critical for conveying intended meaning and ensuring consistent term usage. This paper explores how meaning is represented in ontologies and how it can be effectively represented and communicated, addressing challenges such as indeterminacy of reference and meaning holism. To this end, instead of following the conventional approach of beginning with existing ontologies and working toward alignment or modularization, this article proposes a reversal of perspective: taking the ontological term as the starting point and introducing a new structure, named 'ontological unit', characterized by: a term-centered design; enhanced characterization of both formal and natural language statements; and an operationalizable definition of communicated meaning based on general assertions. By formalizing the meaning of ontological units, this work seeks to enhance the semantic robustness of terms, improving their clarity and accessibility across domains. Furthermore, it may offer a more effective foundation for ontology generation and significantly improves support for key maintenance tasks such as reuse and versioning. This article aims to establish the theoretical groundwork for the proposed approach and to lay the foundations for future applications in applied ontologies.