- From: Peter F. Patel-Schneider <pfps@research.bell-labs.com>
- Date: Wed, 02 Jan 2002 10:42:48 -0500
- To: seth@robustai.net
- Cc: www-rdf-logic@w3.org, horrocks@cs.man.ac.uk
From: "Seth Russell" <seth@robustai.net> Subject: Difference between syntactic building blocks and formal languages ... Date: Fri, 28 Dec 2001 15:04:11 -0800 > Re: http://lists.w3.org/Archives/Public/www-webont-wg/2001Dec/0173.html > > Quoting from: Ian Horrocks (horrocks@cs.man.ac.uk) > > [[ > These sorts of problem illustrates just why we need a precisely > defined semantics for our languages. If we allow for two possible > interpretations we may get into all sorts of difficulties: > > - it may be impossible to say something in DAML+OIL without stating > something unintended in RDF (and vice versa) > > - it may be impossible to know which of two (possibly conflicting) > meanings is the intended one > ]] > > But if we consider RDF\triples to be just syntactic building blocks with no > formal semantics whatsoever, then would we still have this problem? This > view would mean that the entailments of any statement are only the > entailments that can be infered by the axioms related to the arc label. In > other words property arcs have semantics and entailments, but languages like > DMLS, RDFS don't. This has the advantage of allowing us to mix and match > all the available properties of all the schema written in or translatable > into NTriples. RDF does have at least an intended meaning, and is probably getting a formal semantics. In light of this, I feel that any use of RDF triples has to conform with the intended meaning. > Would that work? If not, why not? I think that the problem is what a web ontology language syntax would want to use the parts of RDF that have a non-trivial intended meaning which would get in the way. > Seth Russell peter
Received on Wednesday, 2 January 2002 10:43:56 UTC