The Classification of Relators
The classification of relationships was developed in two papers: “Classifying Relationships” Knowledge Organization 39:3, May, 2012, 165-78, and “Toward a Classification of Relationships.” Knowledge Organization 39:2,March, 2012, 83-94.
To distinguish relationship concepts from thing concepts, mathematical symbols are used rather than letters or numbers notationally. Some of these symbols are commonly employed in other classifications. Italicized letter subscripts are employed for specific types of causal relationship.
It is first necessary to classify certain common sorts of non-causal relationships that must generally be captured in any classification (Note though that these will always link other basic concepts within the Basic Concepts Classification; it is not always feasible to search by subsidiary terms in other classifications, nor are these generally standardized across classes):
Classifying Non-Causal Relators
Some initial considerations and notation for classifying causal relators
Since most causal relators have opposites (move/rest, cause/ do not cause), we can reduce the complexity of our classification of relators by allowing the opposite of each (when appropriate) to be captured by underlining.
Some relators also have inverses: imply is the inverse of infer. It should generally be both possible and desirable to represent inverse meanings in precisely the same way. Since A implied X to B has the same meaning as B inferred X from A, these should be represented by exactly the same notation. We will generally not bother to list inverses in what follows.
Since many relators refer to doing something again (most/all of the ‘re-’ verbs do so, but there are others), it is also useful to capture all such relators by ‘do X’ combined with the notation for again: N2w. [See N Main Class]
Relators will generally be listed in the past participle. It should be stressed, though, that they can generally be used as present participles as well: ‘A causing B’ is similar to ‘A causes B’ for most classificatory purposes. If distinctions needed to be made, this could be done through compounding with suitable temporal indicators. It should also be stressed that the linking terms ‘to’ or ‘to be’ can generally be omitted: ‘cause to lose’ is ‘cause lose’ and ‘cause to be free’ is ‘cause free.’
We begin by discussing, and providing notation for, causation/influence itself:
Particular sorts of influence can be designated using italicized subscripts. Three broad classes of influence are identified: physical, biological and intentional. We begin with a class of relators that can be applied to all three of those domains.
Relators that Transcend the Types Below
All of the above relators operate between/among things. We also need to classify certain ‘changes’ that may occur within a particular phenomenon:
The above relators can be combined to generate a much larger and more precise set of relators. See Some Compounds of Basic Concepts