Re: Consolidating triple/edges -- named occurrence version

On 5 Jan 2024, at 13:30, Thomas Lörtsch <tl@rat.io> wrote:

Is the following
 << :wed-1 | :liz :spouse :richard >> .
an "occurrence term" (my label), and as such is asserted?

Nope. A “term” is never asserted, it is just an expression denoting a resource.

so different from an unasserted triple term
   << :liz :spouse :richard >>
and syntactic sugar for
   :wed-1 rdfx:occurrenceOf << :liz :spouse :richard >>
?

In an approach where triple terms are part of the language as terms, they again do denote resources and they are not asserted.

 PREFIX : <https://schema.org/>
 << <#bp23> | <book> :datePublished "2023" >> .
 << <#bp23> | <book> :publisher <X> >> .
 <#bp23> a :PublicationEvent ;
     :location <London> .

You do introduce a graph here. Just a slight change of the syntax and it would be "official":

PREFIX : <https://schema.org/>
   <<
      <#bp23> |
      <book> :datePublished "2023".
      <book> :publisher <X>.
   <#bp23> a :PublicationEvent ;
                   :location <London> .

It's also obvious how this would syntactically map to RDF named graphs. Of course a merely syntactic mapping would lose the semantics. But that again could be added via a description (ideally using a standard vocabulary, as the RDF 1.1 WG envisioned in the Note on dataset semantics).

In this specific example it could work, since the triples in the graph {<book> :datePublished “2023”. ,  <book> :publisher <X>.} seen as “definite descriptions” {“the publication of <book> in 2023”, “the publication of <book> by <X>”} can actually refer to the same event. In general this wouldn’t be true for an arbitrary graph.
This emphasises that generalising to graphs requires to look extensively at their use cases first in order to better understand the appropriate semantics.

To better see that, you can verbalise the triple term (the truth-bearer) as a definite description:
you are saying that “the publication of <book> in 2023” and “the publication of <book> by <X>” in that graph snippet both refer indeed to a single publication event located in London; and, clearly, those triple terms (as definite descriptions) could refer to something different in other parts of your graph.

Just to clarify that I understand correctly: by "triple terms (as definite descriptions)" you mean the triple terms themselfes, e. g. used "stand alone" or in other combinations with other triple terms in other (in this syntax somehow "virtual", only denoted by the occurrence identifier) graph occurrences?

Yes.

All this confirms me in my intuition that an extension of the current proposal towards graph terms/occurrences is both unavoidable and straightforward.

Mmmhhh :-)

cheers
—e.