SBVR11 — SBVR Issue - Relationships between States of Affairs

SBVR’s explanation of the concept ‘state of affairs’ could be improved by clarifying how states of affairs include or exclude each other. This is relevant to distinguishing involvement (already defined in SBVR) from inclusion. It is also relevant to understanding the relationship between a situation and the circumstances it includes

The only reason for including ‘state of affairs’ as a concept in the SBVR Meaning and Representation Vocabulary is to be able to talk about the referent in the universe of discourse (the universe of organization that uses the SBVR Business Vocabulary) of propositions, verb concepts and some kinds of noun concepts.

States of affairs never go in an SBVR Business Vocabulary or Rulebook or even a database. Meanings (via their representation) that correspond to the states of affairs go into SBVR Business Vocabularies as concepts and propositions.

If relationships between states of affairs in the universe of discourse need to be referenced in an SBVR Business Vocabulary or Rulebook, they are entered as relationships between the propositions that correspond to them using Semantic Formulations. SBVR Clause 9 provides full support for relationships between propositions and for referencing states of affairs via closed logical formulations of the propositions that correspond to them.

There is no need to add direct relationships between states of affairs to SBVR.

Revised Text:
No Change

Disposition: No Change