RE: OWL "Sydney Syntax", structured english

Hi Kaarel,

Yes I was wrong to say all properties -- you were referring to ObjectPropertys,
not DatatypePropertys. That said, I heartily agree, verbs make 'verbalization'
much better.... my issue is that a verb is a dimension of the rdf:Statement that
should not be coagulated with object property names, because that leads to
inefficiency across verb-tenses while inconsistent with well-established
industry practice for object/resource attribute/property names. So I don't
support the proposed (has+noun) compromise -- verbs should be a separate
attribute of an arc in a DAG. And I would agree that there's little reason at
present to go beyond the possessive and copula verb forms so as to rely on
inference when no verb is stated (via analysis of the predicate object type).

Thanks,
John

>-----Original Message-----
>From: public-owl-dev-request@w3.org
>[mailto:public-owl-dev-request@w3.org]On Behalf Of Kaarel Kaljurand
>Sent: Thursday, November 30, 2006 10:07 AM
>To: John McClure
>Cc: Pat Hayes; Dan Connolly; Anne Cregan; public-owl-dev@w3.org
>Subject: Re: OWL "Sydney Syntax", structured english
>
>
>
>Hello,
>
>On 11/30/06, John McClure <jmcclure@hypergrove.com> wrote:
>>
>> Pat said:
>> >Nothing turns on the noun/verb distinction.
>>
>> The noun/verb distinction prompted my original note.  The paper that Kaarel
>> cited statistically reviewed the linguistics of property names, and
>found that
>> verbs are involved with 65% of property names. In my responses to Kaarel's
>> plaintive assertion that ALL properties should be verb-based, I pointed out
>>    (1) how radical the shift to verbs for property names IS relative to
>> long-established practice within the industry;
>
>just to clarify a little:
>
>what I think I've managed to prove with the OWL verbalizer
>(http://www.ifi.unizh.ch/attempto/documentation/OWL_to_ACE/) is that
>a Description Logic like SROIQ can be verbalized in acceptable and
>understandable English given that the input ontology uses English transitive
>verbs for the property names. Note that I'm only talking about object
>properties
>and not data-valued properties.
>
>I.e. if one wants to discuss his/her ontology with somebody how doesn't
>understand any of the proposed OWL syntaxes (RDF-based or not) then
>the ontology should first be fixed to have verbs as object property names,
>and then verbalized.
>Without this fix, the verbalization would not be understandable. (A compromise
>is to use "verbs" in the form "has+Noun", the verbalization would not suffer
>that much.)
>
>I just hope that the benefit of having a nice English verbalization outweighs
>the burden of having to apply this fix.
>
>--
>kaarel
>

Received on Thursday, 30 November 2006 18:34:08 UTC