Re: RDF Terminologicus

At 02:34 PM 1/4/01 +0100, Pierre-Antoine CHAMPIN wrote:
> > > > Stand for:
> > > >    A labelled entity that is used in descriptions indicate some 
> entity or
> > > >    concept.
> > > >
> > > I don't get this one.
> >
> > I was trying to cover my use of that phrase in the next definition...  I
> > was probably being too picky.
>
>I guess we should refer to [RFC 2396] where TBL defines a resource as
>"a mapping to an entity or a set of entities".
>Web resources' entities are pieces of data, and the same URI can map to
>more than one piece of data, depending on the retrieval context.
>RDF resources' entities can also be human beings, places, etc...
>When a resources maps to an entity,
>we will often say that the resource represents/models/stands for the entity.

Ouch!  I was using entity above in a non-RFC2396 sense.  A simpler approach 
is to not try and define "stand for" and see if its use in the definition 
of 'reification' can "stand" unsupported:

 > Reification (of a statement):
 >    [See RDFM&S section 5]  A resource that stands for the statement
 >    together with the four statements that describe the statement.
 >    In my opinion, a reification of a statement is not unique:
 >    there may be more than one reification of any given statement.

> > Stating:
> >     The expression of an RDF statement [or set of statements]
> >     in some context of discourse that is taken to be an assertion
> >     of the truth of the statement[s] in that context.
>
>Looks more like the definition I was expecting at the beginning :)
>I like this one ; in that definition, Statings are not resources nor 
>statements, but facts of language.
>How to represent/model those facts of languages as resources is another story,
>which is not told in RDF M&S -- since reification resources *stand for* 
>statements, rather than statings...
>
> > I think that "stating" is the basic mode of RDF:  every RDF statement is a
> > stating.
>
>Darn, this becomes confusing.
>You must be meaning that every <piece of RDF which results in a statement> 
>is a stating.
>Am I right ?

I think that's close enough;  maybe we should focus on the offered 
definition of 'stating';  with the additional comment, I was trying to 
offer clarification but clearly achieved the opposite.

#g

Received on Thursday, 4 January 2001 11:22:56 UTC