Dear all,
I agree with the concerns about modeling the activity of learning a language as
a substitute for the ability to communicate in a language. On paper I have a
Ph.D. in French, so surely I’m fluent? Far far from it, as you doubtless noted
in Paris 😊 I also agree that modeling as a Group is problematic for the same
reason as modeling gender as a Group – the requirement for concerted action.
Finally, I agree with Franco’s concern about the narrowness of the scope to
only Language. We also have information about the skills and knowledge of
individuals or groups such as Techniques employed.
I would not want to model a complete skills management HR system (or video
game!), but having some pattern for expressing relevant, observed abilities
would be valuable for searching. Use cases would include:
* Search for Human Made Objects (HMOs) not classified as Paintings, that
were produced by an actor that is known for their ability in a painting
technique. (e.g. drawings by Van Gogh)
* Search for HMOs that carry a text in a language that is not known by the
owner of the object (e.g. manuscript in latin owned by someone not known to
speak latin)
* Search for possible attributions for a text in a known language,
filtering for people known to speak that language.
In terms of solutions, we might consider:
* A super-class for Group (Set?) that allows non-Persons to be aggregated,
and does not have the intentionality of action requirement.
* This would enable further modeling patterns, beyond Group and Curated
Holding.
* A property similar to George’s suggestion that has E55 Type as its range
to include Technique or other types.
* This would enable more specific recording of skills of an Actor
without implying any particular event
* A broad usage / known for activity without times more precise than the
life dates of the actor that encompasses all uses of the language.
* This would enable adding timespans when known, and perhaps be a
pattern for other similar information such as when a person is known as an
author, but is also a painter
We are also modeling our archives at the moment using CRM – it would be very
interesting to compare the results, as there are several issues that we do not
have a solution for that we are particularly happy with. The major area of
concern is the association of properties not at the item level, but at the
aggregate level meaning that some members of the set have this property. When
this can be expressed as data rather than just descriptive text, we are worried
about the false precision. The collections include both digital and physical
objects, which compounds the issue.
Rob
From: Crm-sig <[email protected]> on behalf of Franco Niccolucci
<[email protected]>
Date: Monday, August 26, 2019 at 8:26 AM
To: George Bruseker <[email protected]>
Cc: "[email protected]" <[email protected]>, ""Runa, Lucília""
<[email protected]>, "Barbedo, Francisco"
<[email protected]>
Subject: Re: [Crm-sig] P72 has Language
Dear George, all
I think that there are two issues (at least) here.
The first one concerns the identity criteria of this class. This discussion
started from an issue related to the latter. In this case the grouping of
English speakers, for example, is identified as “those people whose bio states
so”. It does not matter if they really speak/spoke English of not, this
concerns the veridicality of their bio, which is another story.
So the grouping of English speakers is precisely identified. This is not always
the case.
This issue is a particular case of a more general issue concerning fiat vs
bona-fide objects, to use the terminology introduced by Smith and Varzi about
geographical (but not only) objects. As you may remember, fiat ones have
precise boundaries, bona-fide don’t. For groupings, belongingness has the same
alternatives, and in most cases what we may call “fiat belongingness” is based
on a formal definition, like a listing, mathematical criteria, a decree and so
on. There are thus groupings for which it is easy (feasible?) to assess
belongingness, others for which it is not, others for which it is unclear. The
crm-sig mailing list is an example of a fiat group defined by listing, as is
the group of the citizens of Italy at the time I am writing this email, defined
by the law and recorded in the civil registry.
Nationality - mentioned in the E74 scope note - could belong the uncertain
case: if you consider nationality as the formal status of being citizen of a
country, it is a fiat criterion. But there may be cases in which the
nationality may be uncertain. I don’t want to make examples of today as they
may be politically sensitive, but if you had asked in 1861 to people from
Venice their nationality they would answer “Italian” although their formal
nationality was "Austro-Hungarian”. Thanks to the principle of
self-determination, the number of such cases is much rarer today than it was in
the 19th century, with a few notable exceptions that we all have in mind.
However, 99.999% of the cases refer to formal nationality so the above is just
a pedantic discussion.
Language(s) spoken is much more difficult to assess: what turns the bona-fide
boundary between speakers and non-speakers into a fiat one in this case? A
certificate issued by a school? Self-assessment? I think that the case that
raised this discussion may be easily solved as I mentioned above. But I would
be cautious to use it in other cases.
For the second issue, modelling this grouping as an E74, I understand George’s
concern about the use of E74 Group, which is a subclass of E39 Actor and thus
is required to “[collectively] have the potential to perform intentional
actions of kinds for which someone may be held responsible”, what seems
doubtful for speakers of a language. In my opinion this requirement for
intentional actions could be considered in a very broad sense; for language,
avoiding sexist terminology in English could be an example - stretching it a
bit, I admit. But otherwise, how can we model collectivities like this one and
others such as “archaeologists”, “Buddhists” “Real Madrid fans” etc ?
Finally, George’s proposal is nice but addresses only the language issue and
not other groupings/features of the same type, i.e. collectivities based on
some common characteristic, but not required to be able to collectively perform
intentional actions, for example illiterate people.
Best
Franco
Prof. Franco Niccolucci
Director, VAST-LAB
PIN - U. of Florence
Scientific Coordinator
ARIADNEplus - PARTHENOS
Editor-in-Chief
ACM Journal of Computing and Cultural Heritage (JOCCH)
Piazza Ciardi 25
59100 Prato, Italy
Il giorno 26 ago 2019, alle ore 08:29, George Bruseker
<[email protected]<mailto:[email protected]>> ha scritto:
Dear all,
In the context of multiple modelling projects, I have run into the need to
model the fact that an individual is known to have spoken/used a language. It
is a common attribute recorded of an individual in an information system.
Often, the only information we have / is known, is that someone 'had language'
x or y. The fact that someone is a user / speaker of a language is a
potentially directly observable phenomenon. I would thus argue that it can be
considered a direct property of an instance of E21 Person. To model competency
(native, very good etc.) and/or aspect (written/oral/reading), it might also be
necessary to add a .1 property or two.
Modelling how a person acquired a language, when they lost it etc. would
require looking at temporal classes, but in the information systems I have seen
this is usually not recorded so is not be an immediate modelling need. While I
see the logic behind the group modelling pattern, it would seem to go against
the idea that a group self-identifies and can in principle act as one. While I
think one can make the case for a nation to potentially act as one unit (via
their institutions), I don't think that you will get all English, Italian, or
French speakers (separately) to create a joint programme of action. The E7
solution is problematic because we don't know any particular event of the
using/speaking of language, or rather we are not primarily interested in it. If
we wanted to use an event like that, it would have to be something like,
language speaking phase/event (where we meant the long term activity of
continuously using the language), which is probably hard to know in most cases
anyhow.
I would thus like to propose to make an issue to discuss the addition of a new
binary property, something like: E21 Person 'was user of' E57 Language. The
justification is that it is an empirically verifiable property that adheres to
a human actor and is regularly recorded in documentation schema for person
data. It seems like it might be good to model this in CRMSoc. I would agree
that eventually one might want to model the acquisition of the language or the
temporal extent of when one was a user of a language. This could built off of
the simple property.
Best,
George
On Sun, Aug 25, 2019 at 10:12 AM Christian-Emil Smith Ore
<[email protected]<mailto:[email protected]>> wrote:
Dear all,
Dear all,
It is correct as Franco writes, that a group can be used to model the speakers
of a language.
The class E74 Group is a very strong mechanism and can be used to model almost
any relationship between actors, that is, the members of the group has the
relationship indicated by the type of the group. The classes
E85 Joining and E86 Leaving and the properties
P143 joined (was joined by): E39 Actor
P144 joined with (gained member by) E74 Group
P145 separated (left by) E39 Actor
P146 separated from (lost member by) E74 Group
enable us to model the time aspect.
At least in my opinion, the class E55 Tyoes and P2 has type can be used to
model persons abilities like speaking a language in the cases where time is not
a concern. On the other hand this timelessness give an impression that a type
indicate a trait or some immanent characteristics of a person. It is a
philosophical question whether language skills characterize a person in such a
way.
There is an ongoing issue 329 in CRM about states. In connection with this
issue there is a table with an overview: “CRM Properties that may have shorter
temporal validity than their domain and range”
http://cidoc-crm.org/sites/default/files/table%20of%20issue%20329.docx
Among these P2 has type is listed. It is still not decided how this time
specific validity should be modelled in CRM.
Best,
Christian-Emil
________________________________________
From: Crm-sig
<[email protected]<mailto:[email protected]>> on behalf
of Franco Niccolucci
<[email protected]<mailto:[email protected]>>
Sent: 24 August 2019 19:45
To: Maria Jose de Almeida
Cc: [email protected]<mailto:[email protected]>; "Runa, Lucília";
Barbedo, Francisco
Subject: Re: [Crm-sig] EMAIL SUSPEITO: P72 has Language
Dear Maria, all
the problem comes from the fact that the CRM usually models what humans DO, not
what they ARE. To model the latter, it is therefore necessary to introduce an
event in which the person participates, as Thanasis suggested. What he proposes
is correct, but considering a language instrumental to the activity of learning
it sounds a bit awkward to my ear: common sense would consider so a handbook,
an app, a teacher etc.
Also, such activity may be problematic with native languages where an
intentional action (= activity) is difficult to attribute to a few months old
baby.
From your description I believe that you are interested in documenting the
factual knowledge of a language, not that/how it was learnt, so I suggest the
following approach.
In this specific case you might use membership in an E74 Group, similar to what
is suggested in the scope note of E74 for ‘nationality'. Thus you would have
very large groupings of speakers of different languages, and speaking one of
them would correspond to being member of that specific group, e.g.
Maria P107 is member of E74 Group 'Portuguese speakers’.
Incidentally, this option would also enable you (if you wish) to distinguish
among the levels of knowledge of that language via P107.1 kind of member E55
Type ’native speaker’. Thus, also the following would hold for you: Maria P107
is member of E74 Group ‘English speakers’, but with P107.1 kind of member E55
Type ’second language speaker’. Further flexibility can be introduced with this
P107.1 if required, like “writer”, “translator”, etc.
Best
Franco
Prof. Franco Niccolucci
Director, VAST-LAB
PIN - U. of Florence
Scientific Coordinator
ARIADNEplus - PARTHENOS
Editor-in-Chief
ACM Journal of Computing and Cultural Heritage (JOCCH)
Piazza Ciardi 25
59100 Prato, Italy
> Il giorno 23 ago 2019, alle ore 16:17, Maria Jose de Almeida
> <[email protected]<mailto:[email protected]>> ha scritto:
>
>
> Dear all,
>
> As some of you may know, I’m working in the Portuguese National Archives an
> we are building a new data infrastructure using CIDOC-CRM for archival
> description.
> When describing biographical information it’s common to state that some
> person was fluent in some language, or languages, apart from his/her native
> one. Using current archival descriptions standards [ISAD(G) 3.2.2; EAD
> <bioghist>] this is represented within a text, usually a very long text
> string with information of distinct natures. So far we have been able to
> decompose the different elements and represent them adequately as instances
> of CIDOC-CRM classes and link them trough the suitable properties. But we are
> struggling with this one...
> We cannot link a Person (E21) to a language (E56) and neither use multiple
> instantiation, as it has been suggested in other cases
> (http://www.cidoc-crm.org/Issue/ID-258-p72-quantification), because Person
> (E21) and Linguistic Object (E33) are disjoint.
> The only way around I can think of is to consider someone’s speech as a
> linguistic object and state that that person participated in the creation of
> that linguistic object.
> But it seams a rather odd solution as we would have to crate individuals for
> someone’s speech in Portuguese, in French, in Russian, etc. and describe them
> in a very broader manner. Because when it is stated that a person is fluent
> in any of those languages, typically what is meant is that that person could
> interact with other speakers of the same language, mainly trough an oral
> discourse, or read written documents. Not exactly the same as creating
> documents in a foreign language, situation which is much more straightforward
> to represent.
>
> Any thoughts that may help us?
> Thanks!
>
> --
> Maria José de Almeida
> Técnica Superior
>
> Direção de Serviços de Inovação e Administração Eletrónica
> Telefone (direto): 210 037 343
> Telefone (geral): 210 037 100
> [email protected]<mailto:[email protected]>
>
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