Re: Proposal for a SPEK vocabulary RE: Subjects and perspectives in SKOS : the jack of all trades ...

Hmm ...
But the example underscores the different way that controlled languages are
used. Leonard's right with respect to forming logical hierarchical concept
systems. What he says certainly applies for terminological concept systems.
But some thesauri are indeed structured according to Bernard's example, and
that's one reason I've been working to underscore potential differences in
practice between different perspectives: if you want to find information on
measuring wetness, use "Hygrometry". This may make perfect good sense in a
given information retrieval system, whereas indicating that hygrometry is a
superordinate term for wetness would be wrong.
 Bye for now
Sue Ellen

 On 10/21/05, Bernard Vatant <bernard.vatant@mondeca.com> wrote:
>
>
>
> Leonard
>
> Thanks for the feedback. As said before, those examples were quite random
> and I appreciate
> any suggestion to improve them.
>
> > As I am not an "RDF techie" I'll not comment on that aspect, but would
> > just like to suggest some changes in the examples, because they contain
> > several invalid relationships that I would not like to see propagated.
>
> Agreed, but don't forget that all the point of aspects and perspectives is
> to make the
> notion of "valid" or "invalid" relationships *specific to a perspective*.
>
> > At present it appears to me that you have the relationships (if I may
> > avoid the complexity of RDF by expressing them in a variation of
> > conventional thesaurus form, assuming English as the default language):
>
> > Wetness
> > fr Humidité
> > UF-fr Hygrométrie
> > UF Moisture
> > BT Measurement
> > Hygrometry
>
> OK ... except for the last one. Agreed, you have to look closely at the
> code to see that,
> but "Hygrometry" is not defined as an instance of skos:Concept, but of
> spek:Term (actually
> maybe I should have defined this class in another namespace). The
> semantics of the
> property "usedTerm" is maybe unclear, but it intends to provide a bridge
> between the SKOS
> framework where terms are attributes of concepts, and another yet to be
> completely
> specified, where "Term" is a class (allowing e.g. to put notes on
> synonyms, and so on)
>
> So ex:Hygrometry does not fit in the Thesaurus framework, and actually you
> don't see it at
> all in the Thesaurus perspective.
>
> > Measurement
> > UF Measure
> > NT Wetness
>
> OK
>
> > Hygrometry
> > fr Hygrométrie
> > UF Moisture level
> > UF-fr Taux d'humidité
> > DEF-fr Mesure du taux d'humidité dans l'atmosphère
> > DEF Measurement of the moisture level in the atmosphere
>
> > Wetness is a property of materials, and not a kind, part or instance of
> > the activity "measurement" or of the material "moisture".
>
> Hmm. Not sure I follow you completely, but you are certainly right.
>
> > Hygrometry is an activity, and therefore could be considered a kind of
> > measurement, but it is not a broader term of the property measured.
>
> Look more closely :)
> It is not declared as such, actually. As said above, it belongs to a
> different
> perspective.
>
> > "Measure" is ambiguous - it might be the result of a measurement
> > activity, or a measuring instrument, or a part of the verb "to measure",
> > not normally acceptable in a thesaurus.
>
> OK
>
> > If you want to retain this example, a better set of relationships would
> > be:
>
> > wetness
> > UF humidity
> > moisture level
> > dryness
>
> I'm amazed to see dryness as a synonym of wetness, but so be it ...
>
> > UF-fr humidité
> > taux d'humidité
>
> OK
>
> > RT moisture
> > hygrometry
>
> No, hygrometry is *not* a related concept.
>
> > measurement
> > NT hygrometry
> > NT-fr hygrométrie
> >
> > hygrometry
> > fr hygrométrie
> > BT measurement
> > RT wetness
> > moisture
> > DEF Measurement of the moisture level in the atmosphere
> > DEF-fr Mesure du taux d'humidité dans l'atmosphère
> >
> > moisture
> > RT wetness
> > hygrometry
>
> Same remarks here. All you write above boils down to try and put
> "hygrometry" is the same
> perspective as "wetness", the unique Thesaurus perspective. It's exactly
> what SPEK wants
> to avoid :(
>
> > Sorry to be pedantic about something which is not the main point that
> > you were wishing to illustrate, but I thought it best to clear it up now
> > in case your example is developed and incorporated in further documents.
>
> At least it shows that the examples are confusing enough to let smart
> people as you miss
> the point altogether :(
> So I agree they have to be improved or completely changed. Actually I
> built on an example
> in the SKOS Guide, maybe it was not a good idea.
>
> Bernard
>
>
>
>


--
Sue Ellen Wright
Institute for Applied Linguistics
Kent State University
Kent OH 44242 USA
sellenwright@gmail.com
swright@kent.edu
sewright@neo.rr.com