On the Semantic Feature Structure of Modeling Concepts: An Empirical Study

Is an actor typically considered a human being? What about an autonomous entity? We investigate the typical feature structure of common modeling concepts in order to create an empirically grounded description of the semantic feature structure that people implicitly use while reasoning about, and with such concepts. Apart from the insights into modeling concept structure that this work presents, consequences for the quality of models and use of modeling languages are discussed. We finally discuss in more detail how the process of modeling, especially when it involves multiple people with different backgrounds, modeling different aspects (i.e., enterprise modeling), stands to benefit from more insights into how the individual modelers see the basic modeling concepts shared between them.