Re: Properties of Properties Question

[Dickinson, Ian J]

> From: Thomas B. Passin [mailto:tpassin@home.com]
> > Well, the assertion is a triple so once you reify it you can
> > association information with it by making assertions about the
> > reified statement.  Isn't
> > that precisely what reification is for?
> Yes, that's what I had previously assumed, but if a reified statement is
> still a statement then it contradicts this claim from Peter
Patel-Schneider
> :
>
> >> (In RDF terms
> >> this would probably be using a statement as the
> >> subject of another
> >> statement, which can't be done in RDF.)
>
> which he re-inforced with the following:
>
> >> This can't be done in DAML+OIL
> >> because assertions cannot have associated information.
>
> Hence my confusion.
>

Well it's so or not so, depending on how you look at it.  You can't make an
assertion about the original statement because it does not exist as an
atomic thing with a node, id, or what have you.  So that's true.  You can
make an assertion about the reified statement, but that reification is not
literally the "original" statement, but instead a different one (or a
different node if you like).

The reification of the original statement is not actually "a" statement,
instead it is a package of three of them.  Still, it can be a node in the
graph.  It would be an anonymous node so far as I can see.  I remember
seeing illustrations of  making assertions about reifications of statements
in the M&S.

Cheers,

Tom P

Received on Wednesday, 24 October 2001 06:02:11 UTC