Reification

Overview

Reification refers to the process by which an abstract idea is made concrete. For example, in the context of RDF, it refers to writing RDF statements about RDF statements.

This kind of metadata about statements often take the forms of:

• Provenance. Information about the source of a statement.
• Likelihood. Information quantifying some probability regarding the statement.
• Context. Information about a setting in which a statement holds.
• Time frame. Information that holds within a particular period of time.