- From: Miles, AJ (Alistair) <A.J.Miles@rl.ac.uk>
- Date: Wed, 25 Feb 2004 14:17:49 -0000
- To: "'public-esw-thes@w3.org'" <public-esw-thes@w3.org>
Here's a possible solution to the longstanding problem of overloaded semantics in thesaurus-style relationships. We have a set of properties for building a CONCEPTUAL STRUCTURE. These structural properties carry very weak semantics, if any. The skos:narrower and skos:broader props allow organising concepts into a hierarchy. The skos:related property allows associative links between branches of the hierarchy. To reiterate, these props imply no semantics, they just allow building of a structure, or to put it another way, structural organisation of concepts. We have a second set of properties which carry well defined semantics. There is one for the instantive (instance-of) relationship - rdf:type. There is one for the generic (class subsumption) relationship - rdfs:subClassOf. And there should be one for the partitive (part-of) relationship - ??? (call it skos:partOf for now, although there must be some reference property we could use). So then these two sets of props are the building blocks for all other props. For example: skos:broaderInstantive rdfs:subPropertyOf skos:broader; rdfs:subPropertyOf rdf:type. skos:broaderGeneric rdfs:subPropertyOf skos:broader; rdfs:subPropertyOf rdfs:subClassOf. skos:broaderPartitive rdfs:subPropertyOf skos:broader; rdfs:subPropertyOf skos:partOf. (or the alternative structural rendering of the partitive relationship ...) skos:relatedPartOf rdfs:subPropertyOf skos:related; rdfs:subPropertyOf skos:partOf. ... So each one of these properties has a structural component and a semantic component, and these two components have been factored out. That's the idea. What does everyone think? Al.
Received on Wednesday, 25 February 2004 09:17:52 UTC