The Impact of the Telic\Atelic Dichotomy on Temporal Databases

Abstract

The telic\atelic distinction, first introduced by Aristotle in his Categories [1], has a long tradition in the Western culture. Prior research in philosophy, linguistics, cognitive science, artificial intelligence and other areas suggests the need to differentiate between temporal facts with goal-related semantics (i.e., telic) from those that are intrinsically devoid of goal\culmination (i.e., atelic). Surprisingly, such a need has been quite neglected in the area of temporal databases (TDBs). However, the telic\atelic distinction has deep effects on TDB data and query semantics, and on conceptual modelling.