Re: A proposal for resolving the punning issue (ISSUE-114) + a related proposal for a tweak to the annotation system

This seems quite reasonable to me.

peter


From: "Boris Motik" <boris.motik@comlab.ox.ac.uk>
Subject: A proposal for resolving the punning issue (ISSUE-114) + a related proposal for a tweak to the annotation system
Date: Wed, 8 Oct 2008 11:03:51 +0100

> 
> Hello,
> 
> Here is a proposal for resolving the punning issue (ISSUE-114); this resolution includes a related tweak to the annotation system.
> 
> 
> After the recent discussions in the WG, I think I understand where the objections to punning come from. Let me explain this on an
> example of the following ontology:
> 
> (1) ClassAssertion( a:Eagle   a:Harry )
> (2) ClassAssertion( a:Species a: Eagle )
> 
> Here, the URI a:Eagle has been overloaded (or subjected to punning): in (1), it is used as a class and in (2) it is used as an
> individual. The confusion surrounding punning seems to have been caused by an impression that under punning individual a:Eagle is
> something different than the class a:Eagle. This is *not* the case with punning: the individual a:Eagle and the class a:Eagle are in
> fact two  *views* of the one and the same URI a:Eagle.
> 
> These two views are necessary in order to obtain a standard first-order semantics. It does not change the fact that, from a user's
> point of view, there is only one thing that the URI a:Eagle stands for.  The idea behind punning is that the two views do not
> semantically interact with each other (as opposed to the RDF situation where the views do semantically interact).
> 
> In order to make this clear in the Syntax document, I propose to introduce a new subsection in Section 5 in which we'd explain these
> things. I would add several examples by means of which I'd explain how punning is intended to be used. There would not, however, be
> any additional forbidden overloadings -- the only ones forbidden would be datatype vs class and object vs data vs annotation
> property.
> 
> 
> Having said that, as Alan has pointed out in a recent email, the annotation subsystem does not completely follow this idea.
> Currently, it is possible to attach *different annotations* to the individual a:Eagle and to the class a:Eagle, like this:
> 
> (3) EntityAnnotation( Class( a:Eagle ) Label( "xxx" ) )
> (4) EntityAnnotation( NamedIndividual( a:Eagle ) Label( "yyy") )
> 
> Now, the class a:Eagle has the label "xxx", but the individual a:Eagle has the label "yyy"; this is clearly not consistent with
> punning providing different views of the same URI. This also causes problems with the RDF mapping. The transformation of (3)--(4)
> into RDF produces the following triples:
> 
> (5) < a:Eagle , rdf:type, owl:Class >
> (6) < a:Eagle , rdfs:Label , "xxx" >
> (7) < a:Eagle , rdfs:Label , "yyy" >
> 
> In this transformation, the fact that "xxx" and "yyy" have been associated with the class and the individual view, respectively, has
> been lost. Thus, the reverse mapping currently produces the following axiom:
> 
> (8) EntityAnnotation( Class( a:Eagle ) Label( "xxx" ) Label( "yyy" ) )
> 
> 
> In order to correct this, I propose to change the annotation system and assign annotations simply to URIs; similarly, the values of
> annotations could be literals or URIs, rather than entities. Thus, axioms (3) and (4) under the new regime would be written like
> this:
> 
> (9)  EntityAnnotation( a:Eagle Label( "xxx" ) )
> (10) EntityAnnotation( a:Eagle Label( "yyy" ) )
> 
> This has a number of benefits. First, it is consistent with the view that the individual and the class a:Eagle are not different
> things. Second, it solves some problems with the RDF mapping and, in  
> fact, brings OWL 2 DL closer to OWL 2 Full. The RDF mapping would then produce only triples (6) and (7), and the reverse
> transformation would produce the following axiom:
> 
> (11) EntityAnnotation( a:Eagle Label( "xxx" ) Label( "yyy" ) )
> 
> The fact that the original ontology consisted of two axioms is lost; however, the result of the reverse transformation correctly
> attaches both annotations to the URI a:Eagle.
> 
> 
> The impact on the documents would be minimal. There is no impact on OWL Full, and there would be rather trivial changes to the
> Syntax and the RDF Mapping documents. The RDF Mapping document would actually become much simpler.
> 
> 
> Please let me know how you feel about this.
> 
> 
> Regards,
> 
> 	Boris
> 
> 
>

Received on Tuesday, 14 October 2008 17:54:40 UTC