From: Ken Dyck
Subject: Re: I can not find a word better than "CAR"
Date: 
Message-ID: <f0c9a0fc-3d96-47da-b630-4de553293fb3@s1g2000prd.googlegroups.com>
On Jun 14, 2:48 pm, ····@zedat.fu-berlin.de (Stefan Ram) wrote:
>   Or are there any other terms, I could use instead
>   of »alpha« and »beta« above?

It sounds like the words you might be looking for are former and
latter.

http://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/former: 2. First of a list of two items.
http://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/latter: 1. relating to or being the
second of two items

-Ken

From: gugamilare
Subject: Re: I can not find a word better than "CAR"
Date: 
Message-ID: <64e1f121-b062-4f0c-8a05-34fb6f302cd0@r31g2000prh.googlegroups.com>
On 16 jun, 11:50, ····@zedat.fu-berlin.de (Stefan Ram) wrote:
> Ken Dyck <····@kendyck.com> writes:
> >It sounds like the words you might be looking for are former and
> >latter.
> >http://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/former:2. First of a list of two items.
> >http://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/latter:1. relating to or being the
> >second of two items
>
>   This is an ingenious observation. But I am afraid that I can
>   not use »former« or »latter« with out a preceding explicit
>   mentioning of something.
>
>   To be specific: I would like to explain a relation »is a«:
>
>       »"is a"
>
>       The relation where the first component
>       is an instance of the second component«.

What about set theory terms?

- "is a" (or "is in" or "belongs to")
  The relation where the "element" belongs to the "set"

You can also use elt instead of element if it is convenient.
From: Thomas A. Russ
Subject: Re: I can not find a word better than "CAR"
Date: 
Message-ID: <ymi8wjs2m55.fsf@blackcat.isi.edu>
···@zedat.fu-berlin.de (Stefan Ram) writes:
>   To be specific: I would like to explain a relation ��is a��:
> 
>       ��"is a"
> 
>       The relation where the first component
>       is an instance of the second component��.
> 
>   I was looking for non-compound terms that can be used instead
>   of ��first component�� and ��second component�� and came up with:

You didn't like "domain" and "range":

    "is a"

    The relation where the domain is an instance of the range.


-- 
Thomas A. Russ,  USC/Information Sciences Institute