Generic relationships are between a class and its members. In generic relationships the subordinate term is always a member or type of the superordinate term. For example, a "parrot" (subordinate) is a "bird" (superordinate).  

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- Generic Relationships
- Instance Relationships
- Whole-Part Relationships

Types of Hierarchical Relationships

ANSI/NISO. (2005). Guidelines for the Construction, Format, and Management of monolingual Controlled Vocabularies. American National Standards Institute. https://groups.niso.org/higherlogic/ws/public/download/12591/z39-19-2005r2010.pdf 

Guidelines for the Construction, Format, and Management of monolingual Controlled Vocabularies

Generic Relationships

Instance relationships are between a category and a single instance of that category. Typically the superordinate term is a common noun and the subordinate term is a proper name. For example, an instance of the term "rivers" (superordinate)  is the term "Mississippi River" (subordinate).  

Instance Relationships

Whole-part relationships are between terms where the subordinate term is a part of the superordinate term. This can be applied to different contexts like hierarchical organizations, geographic locations, or an object and its constituent parts. For example, "tires" (subordinate) are part of a "car" (superordinate). 

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