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One of the curious things about ontologies is that they cannot be formalized or even discussed in the absence of some sort of ur-ontology -- an ontology that provides the concepts that make it possible to express the semantics of ontologies.
Digression: The World Wide Web Consortium claims that significant benefits -- cheap tools -- will redound to the public because it has gone to the trouble of recommending a particular way of declaring ontologies -- a specific ontology ontology. Maybe so, but we would be wise to remember that the W3C is a vendor consortium, not a philanthropy, and that to be in control of a vocabulary is to be in control of what can be said, and how it can be said.