RE: Motivation: Gerund or Infinitive

“If we do decide to change it, I would prefer being explicit with the infinitive:  toReview, toLink, toComment, toTag, etc. to avoid confusion with the noun.”

I have no problem with that, in fact I think it’s a good idea.

Ray


From: Robert Sanderson [mailto:azaroth42@gmail.com]
Sent: Thursday, February 05, 2015 9:51 AM
To: public-annotation@w3.org
Cc: Web Annotation
Subject: Re: Motivation: Gerund or Infinitive

Apologies for missing the call.

I'm in favor of sticking with the current form:

* backwards compatibility with existing OA systems
* the change is purely cosmetic, rather than other changes to date which have been justified by technical requirements
* for consistency, changing the motivations' URIs would mean changing the relationship as well
* confusion between the infinitive (without 'to') and a similar noun seems to be similar to the confusion of seeing a gerund

And notably:

* It's just a URI :) It could be completely opaque, but that would make remembering which is which much harder. So the form is just a convention that was adopted.

* Extensions could mint URIs that happen to take an infinitive form (or any other!), and relate them to the core set in the method outlined already via the skos relationships. We already have a way to reconcile similar, or identical, concepts between ontologies.

If we do decide to change it, I would prefer being explicit with the infinitive:  toReview, toLink, toComment, toTag, etc. to avoid confusion with the noun.

Rob


On Wed, Feb 4, 2015 at 4:56 PM, Benjamin Young <bigbluehat@hypothes.is<mailto:bigbluehat@hypothes.is>> wrote:
+1

On Wed, Feb 4, 2015 at 4:53 PM, Bill Kasdorf <bkasdorf@apexcovantage.com<mailto:bkasdorf@apexcovantage.com>> wrote:
The basic problem is with the English language, which often uses the same word as a noun and a verb. Why don't we pick a language that doesn't do that? ;-) –Bill Kasdorf

From: Benjamin Young [mailto:bigbluehat@hypothes.is<mailto:bigbluehat@hypothes.is>]
Sent: Wednesday, February 04, 2015 4:49 PM
To: Denenberg, Ray
Cc: Web Annotation
Subject: Re: Motivation: Gerund or Infinitive

Well... :)

It would always technically *be* a verb, but I'm not sure it'd be clear in this JSON.

```
{
  "motivatedBy": "comment"
}
```

Really, though, the "to comment" form could be made as a custom set of SKOS Concepts for using the infinitive form:
http://www.w3.org/TR/annotation-model/#extending-motivations


But I'd want to see that available only as an extension and not mixed into the `oa` namespace as that would cause yet more confusion, I'm afraid.

Anyway. :) Saying the same thing different ways, so I'll let others weigh in.

Laters,
Benjamin

On Wed, Feb 4, 2015 at 3:57 PM, Denenberg, Ray <rden@loc.gov<mailto:rden@loc.gov>> wrote:

From: Benjamin Young [mailto:bigbluehat@hypothes.is]<mailto:[mailto:bigbluehat@hypothes.is]>

> oa:motivatedBy comment

> has potentially different meaning than

> oa:motivatedBy commenting

>

> The first (to me at least) implies that my annotation was motivated by a prior

> comment



Only if you take “comment” to be a noun, but the proposal is to use the infinitive form (where the "to" part of the infinitive is implied) thus it would always be understood to be a verb.



So:



oa:motivatedBy  "comment"

says:

" motivatedBy   to comment"



Admittedly this doesn't sound as good as if the predicate were (as we thought yesterday) oa:motivation.  in that case it would say:   "motivation: to comment".   Actually I’d like to change to predicate (back) to oa:motivation.



Ray











--
Rob Sanderson
Information Standards Advocate
Digital Library Systems and Services
Stanford, CA 94305