- From: Andrea Perego <andrea.perego@jrc.ec.europa.eu>
- Date: Wed, 13 Jan 2016 11:35:01 +0100
- To: Frans Knibbe <frans.knibbe@geodan.nl>
- Cc: Bill Roberts <bill@swirrl.com>, Krzysztof Janowicz <janowicz@ucsb.edu>, Jeremy Tandy <jeremy.tandy@gmail.com>, SDW WG Public List <public-sdw-wg@w3.org>
On 13/01/2016 10:49, Frans Knibbe wrote:
> Whether 'data' is used as a plural or singular noun probably does not
> have much to do with British English versus US English. The problem
> exists in Dutch language too and I can imagine in some others too.
Yes, this applies also to Italian ("dato", singular; "dati", plural).
> I think it has to do with awareness of the word being a plural form. When
> someone recognizes that 'data' is the plural form of 'datum' she or he
> will probably be more likely to treat it as a plural form.
Based on my experience, I think it's quite clear to non-native English
speakers that "data" corresponds to the plural (or, possibly,
uncountable) form in their mother language, and therefore we don't care
much about whether it is used or not with a (verbal) singular person.
Personally, I'm fine with either options (uncountable / plural), but for
the reason above I don't see any issue in treating "data" as uncountable
in our specs.
Also, we might consider aligning with DWBP. In their BPs, "data" is
always treated as uncountable, and therefore used with the singular
verbal person.
See: https://www.w3.org/TR/dwbp/
BTW, in the DWBP BPs, "metadata" is treated sometimes as plural, and
sometimes as uncountable - Wiktionary says "uncountable":
https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/metadata#Noun
> A similar
> word is 'media'. I think it is used as a singular when the word is not
> recognized as the plural form of 'medium'. It happens with Italian words
> too - I often hear or read words like 'grafitti' or 'panini' being used
> as singular nouns.
s/grafitti/graffiti/ ;)
Cheers,
Andrea
Received on Wednesday, 13 January 2016 10:35:42 UTC