This property specifies that the temporal extent of the domain instance A of E2 Temporal Entity starts definitely before the end of the temporal extent of the range instance B of E2 Temporal Entity.
In other words, if A = [Astart, Aend] and B = [Bstart, Bend], we mean Astart < Bend is true.
This property is part of the set of temporal primitives P173 – P176, P182 – P185.
This property corresponds to a disjunction (logical OR) of the following Allen temporal relations (Allen, 1983): {before, meets, overlaps, starts, started-by, contains, finishes, finished-by, equals, during, overlapped by}
Typically, this property is a consequence of a known influence of some event on another event or activity, such as a novel written by someone being continued by someone else, or the knowledge of a defeat on a distant battlefield causing people to end their ongoing activities. This property is not transitive.
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Figure 10: Temporal entity A starts before the end of temporal entity B. Here A is longer than B
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Figure 11: Temporal entity A starts before the end of temporal entity B. Here A is shorter than B