Re: syntax and semantics

On Mon, 23 Sep 2002, Patrick Stickler wrote:

> I wanted to briefly recap a proposal that I've alluded to in
> various recent posts, lest it get lost in the mix...
>
> Regarding tidyness the relation of syntactic and semantic equality:
>
> 1. Two nodes which may not be semantically equal must have distinct
>    labels (i.e. inline literals must be given unique labels)
>
> 2. All nodes with identitical labels are syntactically tidy in the
>    abstract graph, and thus are semantically equal.
>
> 3. Two nodes which do not have identical labels are not necessarily
>    semantically unequal. Equality may be determined based on additional
>    knowledge elsewhere in the graph or outside the scope of the RDF MT.
>
> 4. Applications may presume syntactic node intersection as equality
>    of meaning.
>
> 5. Applications may not presume syntactic node inequality as inequality
>    of meaning.

I believe this has already been most succinctly summarised by Jeremy,
who at one point observed that,

"The WG resolves to abide by the conclusions of elementary mathematics"

:-)


-- 
jan grant, ILRT, University of Bristol. http://www.ilrt.bris.ac.uk/
Tel +44(0)117 9287088 Fax +44 (0)117 9287112 http://ioctl.org/jan/
Boycott Arabic numerals! What have they ever done for us?

Received on Monday, 23 September 2002 07:06:51 UTC