Re: FRaC Faliscan language Example

Dear Christian, all,

Il giorno lun 8 mar 2021 alle ore 16:54 Christian Chiarcos <
christian.chiarcos@web.de> ha scritto:

> Hi Fahad, dear all,
>
> Am Mo., 8. März 2021 um 12:17 Uhr schrieb Fahad Khan <
> anasfkhan81@gmail.com>:
>
>> Hi Everyone,
>> I have been working on modelling an entry from a lexicon currently being
>> compiled as part of an Italian project on Italic languages and I think it
>> potentially shows some limitations in the current ontolex/FRaC approach.  I
>> would like to discuss this at the next telco but I will give a description
>> here in order to get some feedback from the list too.
>>
>> In the example in question we have a Faliscan word, ekupetaris, which has
>> different attested representations for the same form (or same morphological
>> variant). That is, the masculine, nominative, singular form has been
>> attested in the following written variants:  "ECVPETARIS", "EQUPETARS",
>> "ekupetaris", "ekvopetaris", "ekvopetars", "epetaris", "eppetaris".  Each
>> of these written variants has at least one attestation in some inscription.
>> In the case of "ekupetaris" there are four different attestations; the
>> others have one apiece.
>>
>> According to the ontolex-lemon model these are all written
>> representations of the same Form element (the masculine, nominative,
>> singular form of the noun).
>>
>
> You seem to assume that the same features for the same lexical
> representation lead to exactly one Form. I don't think this is required. In
> fact, we can have different forms with identical features but differences
> in usage. Think of English "has" and "hath", which probably should be two
> forms. Despite both being 3.sg.ind.prs, they are not interchangeable.
> Looking at your examples, these forms also differ *phonologically*, not
> just orthographically. There are at least five phonologically
> differentiable forms here:
>
> "ECVPETARIS", "ekupetaris",
> "EQUPETARS",
> "ekvopetaris",
> "ekvopetars",
> "epetaris", "eppetaris"
>
> Everything else is just orthography. If your resource *decides* to define
> forms as phonologically-based (this is not required), these would probably
> be it.
> However, this is pre-standardized writing, and you could go as far as to
> distinguish every attested form simply because you can *never* be certain
> whether there really are no phonological differences (epe- vs. eppe- may be
> a difference, for example).
>
>
The ontolex guidelines are seemingly clear on this: that Form should be
used only for morphological or grammatical variation (which afaik is
usually defined as morphosyntactic variation). To underline this, the
example of "privacy" is given as a Form with two different phonetic
representations (Lexicon Model for Ontologies: Community Report, 10 May
2016 (w3.org) <https://www.w3.org/2016/05/ontolex/#forms>). If you are
suggesting that we could consider other kinds of relevant variation (e.g.,
representing phonological differences) in defining forms then the
guidelines should probably be adjusted (as GIlles mail and other comments
I've heard would seem to suggest there is at least a potential ambiguity in
the current wording). Indeed the solution which you suggest in which each
variant would be a separate Form, so that we would have seven forms (each
of which is marked as singular, masculine, nominative) with their own
separate attestations and written representations is the one which we had
originally wanted to use before checking what the guidelines said.  (In
addition instance the OED seems to use Form in the broader sense which you
mean Christian, rather than the one in the guidelines)


>
>
>> Another possibility could be the creation of a new class (in FRaC),
>> something like AttestedRepresentation which is also a FRaC observable with
>> associated properties attestedRep stringValue such that writtenRep is
>> equivalent to attestedRep o stringValue.
>>
>
> I would rather avoid that. For many reasons: I'm not sure we can
> axiomatize the values of datatype properties in this way. It would create
> something nearly identical with Attestation, leading to a lot of confusion
> among users of FrAC. If this is an observable, this would mean that it can
> have Attestations on its own right -- what is an Attestation of an
> AttestationRep? It would introduce at least two new properties and one new
> class (as opposed to just one reifiable vartrans property that uses the
> same construction template as we previously used for lexical relations),
> and it would be *highly specific* for a use case relevant for epigraphy --
> but not much beyond that (I might be wrong on that one). For a vartrans
> relation between forms, I can see other uses (e.g., systematic mappings
> between related forms of different lexemes, e.g., from different
> languages). For the attestationRepresentation, I'm not sure these do exist.
>
>
The idea would be for AttestedRepresentation to be a reification of a
writtenRep which we could predicate additional information of, in
particular via the use of an Attestation. The Attestation of an
AttestationRep would be a text (or locus) in which a form is
spelled/written in a certain way. For instance, say we wanted to add
information to a lexicon about the first attestation of the spelling of the
word colour as "color" to check whether the American or the English
spelling was the prior one. Currently we can't do this.

> Best,
> Christian
>

Cheers
Fahad