Differentiating Between “Functional” and “Semantic” Roles in a High-Level Conceptual Data Modeling Language

We discuss in this paper, from a pragmatic and operational point of view, the need of a clear differentiation between functional and semantic “roles.” In the first case, according to the linguistic and computational linguistics tradition, roles are seen as relations linking a semantic predicate to its arguments. In the second, in conformity with the ontological and Semantic Web practice, roles are equated to ordinary concepts to be inserted into a standard ontology. As we will show here, the two notions can successfully co-exist in the framework of a high level conceptual modeling language.