Artefacts and Roles: Modelling Strategies in a Multiplicative Ontology

The purpose of this paper is to examine different modelling strategies available in a Multiplicative formal ontology, and the principles that drive their choice. This Study is based on the results of recent work aiming at extending the foundational ontology DOLCE to grasp two quite different notions, that of artefact and that of role. These results, summarized in the paper, show that two multiplicative modelling strategies, entity stacking and property reification, are essential in both cases.