Symbol / Sign / Representation

Local identifier: xwkont:concept:symbol-sign-representation Slug: symbol-sign-representation Editorial status: reviewed Created: 2026-07-06 Modified: 2026-07-08

Scope Note

This crosswalk asks whether XwkOnt needs a distinct concept for the sign vehicle / representation-form / symbolization layer that shows up across several source ontologies. It is intentionally narrower than information-artifact.md and proposition-content.md.

Narrowed 2026-07-06 (maintainer decision). Verification against information-artifact.md's own cited evidence found the following:

• YAMATO's representing thing and representation/representation form quote the same passage information-artifact.md's own YAMATO correspondence already quotes in full, including the "form and content" line. Excluded from this crosswalk.
• SUMO's SymbolicString/Icon/LinguisticExpression are rdfs:subClassOf ContentBearingPhysical, the class information-artifact.md already crosswalks. Excluded from this crosswalk.
• GFO's Symbol_structure and GUM's Symbolization/Signification are terms information-artifact.md itself lists as considered and rejected for its own scope (type-side category; relation-type). Retained in this crosswalk.
• GUM's NameOf/NameRelation are relation-types, the same kind as Symbolization/Signification. Retained in this crosswalk.
• GUM's Name has a stated definition ("an accepted but possibly arbitrary label for some entity") comparable in form to BFO(IAO)'s own Information Content Entity definition (generically dependent, stands in a relation of aboutness to some entity). Excluded from this crosswalk; not added to information-artifact.md by this pass — see Future Work.
• GUM's NameEvent ("the process of giving something a name") is a process/event term. Excluded from this crosswalk; not checked against process.md/event.md by this pass — see Future Work.

This crosswalk's current evidence is GFO's Symbol_structure and GUM's Symbolization/Signification/NameOf/NameRelation.

Core placement resolved 2026-07-08 (session-059, maintainer-confirmed). The single-class-vs-family question (uncertainty-001) is resolved as class-plus-relation-family, directly following the same class-vs-relation split note-001 already observed: xwkont-core:SymbolSignRepresentation (a class under xwkont-core:Universal, mirroring GFO's own Symbol_structure rdfs:subClassOf Category) covers the type-side evidence; a new xwkont-core:symbolizes/symbolizedBy relation pair (mirroring the existing Role/bearsRole/roleOf pattern) covers GUM's relation-type evidence instead. See data/ontology/core.ttl.

Labels, Alternate Labels, and Source Terminology

Role	Label or term	Source	Language	Notes
XwkOnt working label	Symbol / Sign / Representation	XwkOnt	en	Working label for the sign vehicle / representation-form layer.
Alternate label	Sign vehicle	XwkOnt	en	Search-friendly alternate label for the same concept family.
Source term	Symbol / Symbol sequence / Symbol structure	GFO	en	Formal symbol-structure family on GFO's type side.
Source term	SymbolicString / Icon / LinguisticExpression / Word	SUMO	en	SUMO splits the vehicle layer across alphanumeric sequences, visual icons, and language-related expressions.
Source term	(excluded, see Scope Note)	YAMATO	en	YAMATO's representation/representation form/representing thing quote the passage information-artifact.md's own YAMATO correspondence already quotes in full.
Source term	NameOf / NameRelation / Symbolization / Signification	GUM	en	GUM's naming/signification relation family. Name and NameEvent excluded — see Scope Note.
Source term	(no class found with confidence)	BFO	en	No dedicated sign/symbol/representation class found in core BFO.
Source term	(no class found with confidence)	DOLCE	en	No dedicated sign/symbol/representation class found in core DOLCE-Lite.
Source term	(no class found with confidence)	UFO	en	No dedicated sign/symbol/representation class found in the 2021 comprehensive UFO paper.
Source term	(no class found with confidence)	TUpper	en	No dedicated sign/symbol/representation class found in the fetched TUpper files.

Source Definitions and Contextual Notes

Source	Term or identifier	Dimension	Claim type	Definition, quotation, or paraphrase	Reference	Locator	Notes
BFO	(no class found)	technical	non-equivalence	Core BFO uses the word "representation" only incidentally in examples and scope notes, not as a dedicated symbol/sign/representation class. A direct search for symbol, sign, representation, name, and word found no formal sign-vehicle term.	xwkont:ref:bfo-2020	verified absence: bfo-core.ttl, fetched and read directly 2026-07-06	The content-bearing side in BFO belongs to the separate information-artifact / IAO lineage, not to a formal symbol/sign class in BFO core.
DOLCE	(no class found)	technical	non-equivalence	Core DOLCE-Lite mentions "representation" in commentary about situations and processes, but the module does not formalize a dedicated symbol/sign/representation class.	xwkont:ref:dolce-lite-owl	verified absence: DOLCE-Lite.owl, fetched and read directly 2026-07-06	The sign/representation vehicle layer is not reified in core DOLCE-Lite.
UFO	(no class found)	technical	non-equivalence	The 2021 UFO paper discusses representation in the broad conceptual-modeling sense, but a direct search for symbol, sign, representation, name, and word found no dedicated sign/signifier class.	xwkont:ref:ufo-2021	verified absence: UFO PDF text extraction, fetched and read directly 2026-07-06	UFO's reified content is elsewhere (e.g. relation theory, social entities), not in a standalone symbol/sign class.
SUMO	SymbolicString / Icon / LinguisticExpression / Word	technical	direct quotation	SymbolicString: "The Class of alphanumeric sequences." Icon: subclass of ContentBearingPhysical; its examples include "symbolic roadway signs, representational art works, photographs." LinguisticExpression: language-related ContentBearingPhysical, encompassing "Language and the elements of Languages, e.g. Words." Word: "A term of a Language that represents a concept."	xwkont:ref:sumo-niles-pease-2001	verified: current Merge.kif, fetched and read directly 2026-07-06	Excluded from this crosswalk's correspondences (2026-07-06, maintainer decision). All four terms are confirmed rdfs:subClassOf ContentBearingPhysical, the same SUMO class information-artifact.md already crosswalks -- a subclass of an already-crosswalked class, not a different kind of thing. See information-artifact.md's own Future Work cross-reference note for the other side of this record.
GFO	Symbol / Symbol sequence / Symbol structure	technical	direct quotation	Symbol and Symbol_sequence are subclasses of Symbol_structure; Symbol_structure is a Category, and Category's own definition says categories are "closely related to language."	xwkont:ref:gfo	verified: modules/gfo-base.owl, fetched and read directly 2026-07-06	GFO formalizes symbol structure on the universal/type side, not as an individual artifact.
YAMATO	Representation / representation form / representing thing	technical	direct quotation	"By representation, we here mean content-bearing thing." "A representation is composed of two parts, form and content." "It becomes a physical individual only when it becomes a representing thing." The report also says representation form includes language as a symbol sequence.	xwkont:ref:yamato-mizoguchi-2010	verified: YAMATO101216.pdf, "Ontology of informational objects" section, extracted 2026-07-06	Excluded from this crosswalk (2026-07-06). information-artifact.md's own YAMATO correspondence quotes the same passage in full, including "A representation is composed of two parts, form and content." The one line not in that quote — that representation form includes language as a symbol sequence — is a paraphrase, not a direct quotation, and was not independently re-verified. See uncertainty-005.
TUpper	(no class found)	technical	non-equivalence	Search of tupper.all.owl and TUpper-Terms.html for symbol, sign, representation, name, word, icon, and linguistic returned no formal sign/signifier class.	xwkont:ref:tupper-colore	verified absence: fetched TUpper files, read directly 2026-07-06	TUpper does not formalize a sign/representation layer in the fetched artifacts.
GUM	Name / NameEvent / NameOf / NameRelation / Symbolization / Signification	technical	direct quotation	Name: "An accepted but possibly arbitrary label for some entity." rdfs:subClassOf Word. NameEvent: "The process of giving something a name. It does not intrinsically require an addressee (non-addressee-oriented)." rdfs:subClassOf DispositiveMaterialAction and External. NameOf: "The relation that holds betwen a name and its bearer." [sic — "betwen" in the source file itself]. NameRelation: "The relation that holds between a name's bearer and that name." rdfs:subClassOf Symbolization. Symbolization: "This category contains relations that hold between entities and other entities they symbolize'. Concepts in this class logically have two roles: SYMBOL (the domain) and SYMBOLIZED (the range). One relation in this category is the relation between an object and a name which identifies that object."rdfs:subClassOfIntensive.Signification: "Relations concerned with Signification are linguistically realized by verbs like 'represent', 'mean', 'express', e.g., 'green means go'."rdfs:subClassOfSymbolization. |xwkont:ref:gum-owl| **verified**:GUM-31.owl, re-fetched and read directly 2026-07-07 (session-049, independent re-verification; corrected two truncated quotations from the prior 2026-07-06 pass —Symbolization's comment dropped its SYMBOL/SYMBOLIZED domain-range framing and worked example, andSignification's comment dropped its "green means go" example and "linguistically realized" framing) | Narrowed 2026-07-06.NameOf/NameRelation/Symbolization/Significationare relation-types, retained in this crosswalk.Namehas a stated definition comparable in form toinformation-artifact.md's BFO(IAO) Information Content Entity definition (generically dependent, aboutness toward an entity); excluded from this crosswalk, not added toinformation-artifact.mdby this pass.NameEventis a process/event term; excluded from this crosswalk, not checked againstprocess.md/event.mdby this pass. Seeuncertainty-006`.

Source Ontology Correspondences

Correspondence ID	Source ontology	Source term	Source identifier or IRI	Source version	Reference	Inclusion rationale
xwkont:correspondence:symbol-sign-representation:001	GFO	Symbol / Symbol sequence / Symbol structure	https://w3id.org/gfo/base/Symbol_structure (Symbol and Symbol_sequence are subclasses)	GFO 2024-11-18 release	xwkont:ref:gfo	Closest formal anchor on the type side for a symbol/sign structure concept.
xwkont:correspondence:symbol-sign-representation:002	GUM	NameOf / NameRelation / Symbolization / Signification	http://www.ontospace.uni-bremen.de/ontology/stable/GUM-3.owl#NameOf, #NameRelation, #Symbolization, #Signification	GUM 3.1 OWL	xwkont:ref:gum-owl	GUM's naming/signification relation family — relation-types, the same kind of thing across all four terms, and the same reason information-artifact.md lists Symbolization/Signification as considered and rejected for its own scope. Name and NameEvent excluded from this correspondence — see uncertainty-006.

Semantic Comparison Notes

Note ID	Dimension	Claim type	Note	Supporting references	Confidence
note-001	technical	editorial observation	The sources divide the sign/representation family into different formal kinds. GFO puts symbol structure on the Category/type side; GUM turns naming and symbolization into relations. This crosswalk covers those two kinds; YAMATO and SUMO evidence was excluded as duplicative of information-artifact.md (see Scope Note).	xwkont:ref:gfo, xwkont:ref:gum-owl	high
note-002	technical	editorial observation	Narrowed 2026-07-06. GFO Symbol_structure and GUM Symbolization/Signification/NameOf/NameRelation are the terms information-artifact.md lists as considered and rejected for its own scope (type-side category; relation-type) — retained here. YAMATO's representation/representation form/representing thing and SUMO's SymbolicString/Icon/LinguisticExpression quote or match the same evidence information-artifact.md already crosswalks — excluded here.	information-artifact.md	high
note-003	technical	editorial observation	GUM's Name has a stated definition (generically dependent, aboutness toward an entity) comparable in form to information-artifact.md's BFO(IAO) Information Content Entity definition. GUM's NameEvent is a process/event term, not checked against process.md/event.md. Both excluded from this crosswalk; neither added elsewhere by this pass — see uncertainty-006.	xwkont:ref:gum-owl	medium

Mapping Assertions or Candidate Relations

Mapping ID	Subject	Relation category	Object	predicate_id	mapping_justification	Status	Confidence	Rationale	Provenance
xwkont:mapping:symbol-sign-representation:001	GFO:Symbol_structure	overlap	xwkont-core:SymbolSignRepresentation	none	semapv:ManualMappingCuration	candidate	medium	GFO formalizes symbol structure as a type-level category; that overlaps the candidate concept's symbol/sign vehicle scope, but the kind mismatch keeps this short of close-match.	xwkont:ref:gfo
xwkont:mapping:symbol-sign-representation:002	GUM:NameOf / NameRelation / Symbolization / Signification	related	xwkont-core:symbolizes	skos:relatedMatch	semapv:ManualMappingCuration	candidate	medium	Retargeted 2026-07-08 (session-059) from xwkont-core:SymbolSignRepresentation to xwkont-core:symbolizes, resolving uncertainty-001's class-plus-relation-family decision: all four terms are relation-types, not type/category-side evidence, so they correspond to the new relation property (which XwkOnt does not further subdivide into Symbolization/Signification/NameOf/NameRelation), not to the SymbolSignRepresentation class. Name and NameEvent remain excluded from this mapping — see uncertainty-006.	xwkont:ref:gum-owl
xwkont:mapping:symbol-sign-representation:003	xwkont-core:SymbolSignRepresentation	unknown	BFO	none	semapv:ManualMappingCuration	candidate	low	No dedicated sign/signifier class found in core BFO.	xwkont:ref:bfo-2020
xwkont:mapping:symbol-sign-representation:004	xwkont-core:SymbolSignRepresentation	unknown	DOLCE	none	semapv:ManualMappingCuration	candidate	low	No dedicated sign/signifier class found in core DOLCE-Lite.	xwkont:ref:dolce-lite-owl
xwkont:mapping:symbol-sign-representation:005	xwkont-core:SymbolSignRepresentation	unknown	UFO	none	semapv:ManualMappingCuration	candidate	low	The comprehensive UFO paper does not reify a symbol/sign class in the searched text.	xwkont:ref:ufo-2021
xwkont:mapping:symbol-sign-representation:006	xwkont-core:SymbolSignRepresentation	unknown	TUpper	none	semapv:ManualMappingCuration	candidate	low	TUpper's fetched files contain no dedicated sign/representation class.	xwkont:ref:tupper-colore

Uncertainty, Non-Equivalence, and Open Questions

Item ID	Type	Description	Impact	Follow-up
uncertainty-001	~~open-question~~ Maintainer-confirmed (session-059): class-plus-relation-family, directly following the class-vs-relation kind split note-001 already observed in this crosswalk's remaining evidence (GFO type-side vs. GUM relation-type). xwkont-core:SymbolSignRepresentation was added to data/ontology/core.ttl as a class under xwkont-core:Universal, mirroring GFO's own Symbol_structure rdfs:subClassOf Category treatment (the same GFO-Category parallel already used for Universal itself, per docs/crosswalks/concepts/universal-type.md). A new xwkont-core:symbolizes/symbolizedBy relation pair (domain/range Entity) was added to cover GUM's Symbolization family, mirroring the existing Role/bearsRole/roleOf pattern. mapping-002 (GUM) was retargeted from the class to the new symbolizes property accordingly; mapping-001 (GFO) is unchanged, still targeting the class. docs/ontology/core-ontology.md, core-axioms.md, core-ontology.mmd, and docs/publication/validation-commands.md/.github/workflows/validate.yml's structural-fallback required_terms lists were kept in sync in the same pass.	The evidence suggests at least three formal kinds inside the candidate family: symbol-structure types, content-bearing physicals / linguistic expressions, and naming/signification relations. It is not yet settled whether XwkOnt should model these as one class, a class plus relation(s), or multiple sibling concepts.	This affects eventual core.ttl placement and the granularity of any future review decision.	Resolved; this concept is now placed in core.ttl. No further follow-up.
uncertainty-002	open-question	BFO, DOLCE, UFO, and TUpper all lack a confident dedicated symbol/sign/representation class in the artifacts searched for this draft. That may be a genuine absence, or it may reflect a need to search adjacent modules / narrower literature more deeply.	Keeps those rows at unknown rather than forcing a false equivalence.	Revisit only if later scope work pulls in a broader BFO extension, a DOLCE successor module, or UFO-adjacent literature that formalizes a signifier layer.
uncertainty-003	open-question	GUM's Word exists, but its definition as an abstraction referring to a numerical value is not clearly the right kind of symbol/representation class for this crosswalk, so it is not treated as a primary correspondence.	Prevents overclaiming a lexical term that may belong to a different part of GUM's vocabulary.	Reconsider only if a later pass broadens the symbol/representation scope to numeric or token-level abstractions.
uncertainty-004	~~open-question~~ Maintainer decision : narrow, not off-ramp or keep-as-is. Applying the rule discussed with the maintainer -- two terms picking out the same referent under different words is an alternate label (e.g. "I"/"me" both denoting self-reference), not a distinct concept; two terms of a genuinely different ontological kind (type vs. individual, relation vs. entity) are not an alternate label even when evidentially adjacent -- YAMATO's representing thing and SUMO's SymbolicString/Icon/LinguisticExpression were excluded as duplicative (same referent/class as information-artifact.md's own evidence). GFO's Symbol_structure and GUM's Symbolization/Signification were retained: information-artifact.md itself explicitly rejected them as the wrong kind (type-side category; relation-type), which is precisely why they are not duplicative of it. mapping-001 (GFO) and mapping-003 (GUM, renumbered from mapping-004) survive; the former mapping-002 (SUMO) was removed; the former mapping-003 (YAMATO) was narrowed to exclude representing thing, retaining only representation/representation form at low confidence pending uncertainty-005.	Independent re-verification (2026-07-06) found that this crosswalk's original mapping-003 (YAMATO Representation/representation form/representing thing, close-match, medium-high confidence) cited the same primary-source passage already used as information-artifact.md's own flagship YAMATO correspondence (xwkont:correspondence:information-artifact:004, close-match/medium-high to BFO(IAO)/DOLCE(DUL)) -- both crosswalks quote "A representation is composed of two parts, form and content... It becomes a physical individual only when it becomes a representing thing" verbatim. Separately, the original correspondence-002 (SUMO SymbolicString/Icon/LinguisticExpression) are, on direct verification against Merge.kif, literal rdfs:subClassOf ContentBearingPhysical -- the same SUMO class information-artifact.md already crosswalks via its parent. This repo has an existing precedent for subclasses of an already-crosswalked class not getting their own concept (UFO's ~19 RelationStereotype entries, ruled sub-kinds of the already-crosswalked Relation concept, per TODO.md). By contrast, GFO's Symbol_structure and GUM's Symbolization/Signification were explicitly considered and rejected by information-artifact.md (wrong kind: type-side, not individual-side; relation-type, not entity-type) -- those are not in conflict, the same reuse pattern already established for SUMO's Attribute across Role/Quality/Relation.	Resolved the scope question that previously blocked any advance past draft. Affected the former mapping-001 (GFO, retained), mapping-002 (SUMO, removed), and mapping-003 (YAMATO, narrowed) directly. Two narrower open questions followed (uncertainty-005, uncertainty-006); both are now also resolved.	Resolved by explicit maintainer confirmation , per this repo's standing practice of routing this class of decision rather than self-closing it.
uncertainty-005	~~open-question~~ Checked information-artifact.md's own YAMATO source_definition text directly. It quotes "A representation is composed of two parts, form and content... It becomes a physical individual only when it becomes a representing thing" in full — the same passage this crosswalk cited for representation/representation form, not a narrower excerpt. The one YAMATO claim not in that quote (representation form includes language as a symbol sequence) is a paraphrase, not a direct quotation, and was not independently re-verified. YAMATO is excluded from this crosswalk's correspondences and mappings; mapping-002 (formerly YAMATO) is removed.	YAMATO's representation/representation form (the type/pattern half of the form-content split, prior to physical embodiment as a representing thing) was retained as this crosswalk's evidence pending a check of whether information-artifact.md's own Information Content Entity scope already reaches that type-level form, or stops at the individual/embodied side (representing thing, already excluded per uncertainty-004's resolution).	Removes this crosswalk's only YAMATO evidence. Remaining evidence is GFO's Symbol_structure and GUM's Symbolization/Signification/NameOf/NameRelation.	None — resolved by direct comparison against information-artifact.md's own Source Definitions text.
uncertainty-006	~~open-question~~ Checked all four terms' stated definitions (already directly verified against GUM-31.owl) against information-artifact.md's own evidence. NameOf ("the relation that holds between a name and its bearer") and NameRelation (its inverse) are relation-types, the same kind as Symbolization/Signification — added to this crosswalk's correspondence and mapping. Name ("an accepted but possibly arbitrary label for some entity") has a definition comparable in form to information-artifact.md's BFO(IAO) Information Content Entity definition ("generically dependent... stands in a relation of aboutness to some entity") — excluded from this crosswalk; not added to information-artifact.md by this pass, recorded in Future Work instead. NameEvent ("the process of giving something a name") is a process/event term, not checked against process.md/event.md — excluded from this crosswalk, recorded in Future Work instead.	GUM's Name/NameEvent/NameOf/NameRelation were part of the original draft's GUM correspondence but had not been independently verified against information-artifact.md's own evidence.	NameOf/NameRelation are now part of this crosswalk's GUM correspondence/mapping. Name and NameEvent are excluded from this crosswalk and not placed elsewhere by this pass.	Two items remain for a future pass, not decided here: whether Name should be added to information-artifact.md as GUM evidence (its current GUM mapping states no correspondence was found with confidence); and whether NameEvent corresponds to anything in process.md/event.md (docs/crosswalks/candidate-concepts.md's GUM.102 row already tags it "Event," independently of this crosswalk's draft, but that tag has not been checked against event.md's own Source Definitions/Correspondences).

Provenance and References

• xwkont:ref:bfo-2020 — Basic Formal Ontology (BFO) 2020 — verified absence for this crosswalk's scope, 2026-07-06; independently re-confirmed 2026-07-07 (session-049) against 21838-2/owl/bfo-core.ttl, re-fetched fresh — grep for "symbol"/"sign"/"signifier"/"representation"/"name"/"word" found only incidental uses inside unrelated skos:scopeNote/skos:definition text, no dedicated class
• xwkont:ref:dolce-lite-owl — DOLCE-Lite OWL translation — verified absence for this crosswalk's scope, 2026-07-06; independently re-confirmed 2026-07-07 (session-049) against DOLCE-Lite.owl, re-fetched fresh — grep for "symbol"/"sign"/"signifier"/"representation"/"name"/"word" found only incidental uses inside unrelated relation-composition comments, no dedicated class
• xwkont:ref:ufo-2021 — UFO: Unified Foundational Ontology — verified absence for this crosswalk's scope, 2026-07-06; independently re-confirmed 2026-07-07 (session-049) against a complete 2026-07-06 full-text extraction of the 2021 paper (reused per modality.md's and non-physical-social-object.md's precedent for the recurring HTTP-403 live-fetch block) — grep for "symbol"/"sign"/"representation" found only incidental prose uses ("representation artifacts," "symbolized as ::"), no dedicated sign/symbol class
• xwkont:ref:sumo-niles-pease-2001 — SUMO / current Merge.kif — verified directly, 2026-07-06; independently re-confirmed 2026-07-07 (session-049) against Merge.kif, re-fetched fresh — SymbolicString/Icon/LinguisticExpression/Word quotations and rdfs:subClassOf ContentBearingPhysical chain match exactly
• xwkont:ref:gfo — General Formal Ontology (GFO) — verified directly, 2026-07-06; independently re-confirmed 2026-07-07 (session-049) against modules/gfo-base.owl, re-fetched fresh — Symbol/Symbol_sequence/Symbol_structure/Category axioms match exactly (Symbol_structure itself carries no skos:definition; the quoted text is Category's own, inherited)
• xwkont:ref:yamato-mizoguchi-2010 — YAMATO 2010 technical report — verified directly, 2026-07-06; independently re-confirmed 2026-07-07 (session-049) against YAMATO101216.pdf, re-fetched fresh and converted via pdftotext — the "form and content"/"representing thing" quotes and the "representation form includes language as a symbol sequence" paraphrase both confirmed verbatim/accurate in the "Ontology of informational objects" section
• xwkont:ref:tupper-colore — TUpper COLORE formalization — verified absence for this crosswalk's scope, 2026-07-06; independently re-confirmed 2026-07-07 (session-049) against tupper.all.owl and TUpper-Terms.html, re-fetched fresh — zero occurrences of "symbol"/"sign"/"signifier"/"name"/"linguistic"/"icon"/"word" in either file
• xwkont:ref:gum-owl — GUM 3.1 OWL — verified directly, 2026-07-06; independently re-verified 2026-07-07 (session-049) against GUM-31.owl, re-fetched fresh through the Wayback Machine snapshot — found and corrected two truncated quotations (Symbolization, Signification); see Source Definitions and this reference's own reuse note

Review History

Review ID	Date	Outcome	Notes
—	2026-07-06	Not yet reviewed — draft	First pass of the 0.3.0 batch. The scope-overlap check against information-artifact.md and proposition-content.md found a distinct sign/representation layer, but the family splits across different formal kinds and still needs reviewer confirmation before any reviewed claim.
—	2026-07-06	Narrowed, still draft	A further independent re-verification pass found the initial scope-overlap check (against information-artifact.md's prose Scope Note) missed that two of the four correspondences cited the identical primary-source evidence information-artifact.md already crosswalks, not merely an adjacent topic — recorded as uncertainty-004. The maintainer applied an explicit rule (two terms for the same referent are an alternate label, e.g. "I"/"me" both denoting self-reference; two terms of a genuinely different ontological kind are not, even when evidentially adjacent) to resolve it as a narrowing, not an off-ramp or a keep-as-is: YAMATO's representing thing and SUMO's SymbolicString/Icon/LinguisticExpression excluded as duplicative; GFO's Symbol_structure and GUM's Symbolization/Signification retained since information-artifact.md itself rejected them as the wrong kind, not as already covered. Two narrower open questions (uncertainty-005, uncertainty-006) remained open at that point.
—	2026-07-06	Both remaining open questions resolved, still draft	Checked information-artifact.md's own Source Definitions text directly for uncertainty-005. Found information-artifact.md's YAMATO correspondence already quotes the "form and content" passage in full; YAMATO is excluded from this crosswalk. For uncertainty-006, checked all four GUM terms' verified definitions against information-artifact.md's evidence: NameOf/NameRelation are the same kind as the already-retained Symbolization/Signification and were added to this crosswalk's correspondence; Name's definition is comparable in form to information-artifact.md's own ICE definition, and NameEvent is a process/event term — both excluded here, neither added elsewhere, recorded in Future Work as open items for information-artifact.md and process.md/event.md respectively. This crosswalk's evidence is now GFO's Symbol_structure and GUM's Symbolization/Signification/NameOf/NameRelation. Still draft — no reviewer pass against docs/governance/contributing.md's Review Checklist has happened yet.
—	2026-07-07	Independently re-verified against all 8 primary sources; advanced to reviewed	Session-049. Re-fetched all 8 primary artifacts directly (not reused from the prior 2026-07-06 pass) and re-checked every claim: bfo-core.ttl, DOLCE-Lite.owl, a cached complete 2026-07-06 UFO 2021 full-text extraction (the live fetch's recurring HTTP-403 block recurred again this session), Merge.kif, modules/gfo-base.owl, YAMATO101216.pdf (converted via pdftotext), tupper.all.owl/TUpper-Terms.html, and GUM-31.owl. Found and corrected two truncated GUM quotations: Symbolization's rdfs:comment had dropped its SYMBOL/SYMBOLIZED domain-range framing and worked example, and Signification's had dropped its "green means go" example and "linguistically realized" framing — both restored to their full verbatim text (see Source Definitions). NameEvent's comment was also found to have a second sentence ("It does not intrinsically require an addressee") not previously quoted; restored. No other defects found: the GFO Symbol/Symbol_sequence/Symbol_structure/Category axiom chain, the SUMO SymbolicString/Icon/LinguisticExpression/Word quotations and subclass chain, the YAMATO "form and content" quotes and "symbol sequence" paraphrase, and all 4 absence claims (BFO, DOLCE, UFO, TUpper) all confirmed exactly as drafted. Per docs/methodology/crosswalk-runbook.md's reviewed-eligibility criterion, GFO's Symbol/Symbol_sequence/Symbol_structure are declared directly in modules/gfo-base.owl (GFO's base module, not an extension) and are now independently verified against that authoritative primary source — sufficient on its own for reviewed, and GUM's NameOf/NameRelation/Symbolization/Signification (also independently verified against GUM-31.owl directly) is a genuine second source. Advanced editorial_status from draft to reviewed.
—	2026-07-07	Cross-reference update — no scope change	Resolved this crosswalk's own two Future Work items: information-artifact.yaml now has a new GUM Name correspondence (mapping-009), and event.yaml now has a new GUM Configuration/NameEvent correspondence (mapping-011). Both reopenings are additive evidence on those crosswalks, not re-reviews; this crosswalk's own reviewed content and mapping assertions are unchanged.
—	2026-07-08	Core placement resolved — class-plus-relation-family	Session-059. Resolved uncertainty-001, the last open item blocking core.ttl placement, per the maintainer's explicit confirmation of a class-plus-relation-family resolution. Added xwkont-core:SymbolSignRepresentation (class, under xwkont-core:Universal, mirroring GFO's own Symbol_structure rdfs:subClassOf Category) and a new xwkont-core:symbolizes/symbolizedBy relation pair (mirroring the Role/bearsRole/roleOf pattern) to data/ontology/core.ttl. Retargeted mapping-002 (GUM) from the class to the new symbolizes property, since GUM's evidence is relation-type, not type/category-side. docs/ontology/core-ontology.md, core-axioms.md, core-ontology.mmd, and the structural-fallback required_terms lists in docs/publication/validation-commands.md/.github/workflows/validate.yml were kept in sync. This completes core.ttl placement for all ten 0.3.0-batch concepts.

Future Work

• ~~Check whether GUM's Name should be added to information-artifact.md as new evidence~~ — done 2026-07-07: added as correspondence-005/mapping-009 (related, low-medium confidence) — a genuine but narrow object/entity-level analog, unlike the already-rejected Signification/Symbolization relation types.
• ~~Check whether GUM's NameEvent ("the process of giving something a name") corresponds to anything in process.md/event.md~~ — done 2026-07-07: traced to event.md's new Configuration correspondence-011 (mapping-011), a structurally distinct branch from the crosswalk's existing Process correspondence — see event.yaml's uncertainty-007 for the still-open Process-vs-Configuration weighting question.
• ~~Resolve whether the candidate should stay as one class or become a class-plus-relation family before any core.ttl placement decision~~ — done 2026-07-08 (session-059): resolved as class-plus-relation-family (xwkont-core:SymbolSignRepresentation class plus symbolizes/symbolizedBy relation pair); see uncertainty-001's resolution note and data/ontology/core.ttl.
• Cross-reference: docs/crosswalks/concepts/list-sequence.md (2026-07-07) independently re-confirmed GFO's Symbol_sequence and YAMATO's "symbol sequence" language belong to this crosswalk's territory, not a general ordered-collection concept — cited there as an exclusion, not re-litigated. No action needed here; noted for cross-reference discoverability.