On the Semantics of Concept Drift: Towards Formal Definitions of Semantic Change

Semantic change and concept drift are studied in many differentacademic fields. Different domains have different understandings ofwhat a concept and, thus, concept drift is making it harder for researchersto build upon work in other disciplines. In this paper, we aim to addressthis challenge and propose definitions for these phenomena which applyacross fields. We provide formal definitions and illustrate how conceptdrift and related phenomena can be modeled in RDF through the useof context. We explain and support the definitions through an examplefrom historical research and argue that a formal modeling of semanticchange in RDF can help to better interpret data.