Re: Subjects as Literals, [was Re: The Ordered List Ontology]

On Jul 1, 2010, at 11:49 PM, Nathan wrote:

> Pat Hayes wrote:
>> On Jul 1, 2010, at 11:18 AM, Yves Raimond wrote:
>>> "A literal may be the object of an RDF statement, but not the  
>>> subject
>>> or the predicate."
>> Just to clarify, this is a purely syntactic restriction. Allowing  
>> literals in subject position would require **no change at all** to  
>> the RDF semantics. (The non-normative inference rules for RDF and  
>> RDFS and D-entailment given in the semantics document would need  
>> revision, but they would then be simplified.)
>
> I have to wonder then, what can one all place in the s,p,o slots  
> without changing the RDF semantics? literal and bnode predicates for  
> instance? variables or formulae as in n3?
>
> read as: if a new serialization/syntax was defined for RDF what are  
> the limitations for the values of node/object and relationship  
> specified by the RDF Semantics?

None at all. The semantics as stated works fine with triples which  
have any kind of syntactic node in any position in any combination.  
The same basic semantic construction is used in ISO Common Logic,  
which allows complete syntactic freedom, so that the the same name can  
denote an individual, a property, a function and a proposition all at  
the same time.

Pat

PS. Its not a dumb question :-)

>
> Best,
>
> Nathan
>
> ps: apologies if this is a dumb question, I fear i'd still be hear  
> next year trying to answer it myself though ;)
>
>

------------------------------------------------------------
IHMC                                     (850)434 8903 or (650)494 3973
40 South Alcaniz St.           (850)202 4416   office
Pensacola                            (850)202 4440   fax
FL 32502                              (850)291 0667   mobile
phayesAT-SIGNihmc.us       http://www.ihmc.us/users/phayes

Received on Friday, 2 July 2010 05:03:59 UTC