Re: Notes from the Semantic Task Force meeting 2024‐09‐13

Re:  the alternate baseline proposal

The syntax

<< s p o ~ e >>


is, effectively the same thing as:

:s :e :o .
:e rdfs:subPropertyOf :p.

which is to say, you're back to a singleton property. This was the same
argument I made earlier -

Let me express this more formally:

*A reifier **e** of the statement **s p o* *is the same thing as a
subpropery **e** of **p* *that is constrained to only have a subject **s**
and an object **o**. In other words, a reifier is a singleton property.*

This gets back to our reference example:

<<:liz :married :richard ~ :marriage1>> :from 1960; :to :1969 .
<<:liz :married :richard ~ :marriage2>> :from 1980; :to :1989 .

is the same as

:liz :marriage1 :richard .
:marriage1 :from 1960 ; to :1969 .
:marriage1 rdfs:subPropertyOf :married .

:liz :marriage2 :richard .
:marriage2 :from 1960 ; to :1969 .
:marriage2 rdfs:subPropertyOf :married .

This is in fact what the Neo4J data model does. It has implicit reifiers
(you don't see them because they are not explicitly called out in CREATE
statements, but they ARE there).

The solution then is to relax the restriction on the existence of singleton
properties. They are very useful, and they make it possible to
differentiate multiple assertions that have the same subject and object but
that represent different objects (:marriage1, :marriage2).


*Kurt Cagle*
Editor in Chief
The Cagle Report
kurt.cagle@gmail.com
443-837-8725 <http://voice.google.com/calls?a=nc,%2B14438378725>


On Thu, Sep 19, 2024 at 8:22 AM Andy Seaborne <andy@apache.org> wrote:

> Notes from the Semantic Task Force meeting 2024‐09‐13
> which discussed rdf:ReificationProperty
>
>
> https://github.com/w3c/rdf-star-wg/wiki/Notes-from-the-Semantic-Task-Force-meeting-2024%E2%80%9009%E2%80%9013
>
>      Andy
>
>