Dear all,
Sticking to the question of documenting when we have information that
someone knew a language or had a skill in a technique, I reiterate that
I believe really need a new property and not to use p2 has type.
p2 has type is a good solution for classifying a kind of phenomena or
for specializing a class when it does not require a new relation in the
ontology. It's a very useful tool but it does not work for what we need
to document here.
The semantics of saying that someone had knowledge in a language can
indeed be interpreted as E21 Person p2 has type E55 "English Speaker".
It could not, however, be typed E21 person p2 has type E57 Language
"English". Why? Because the E57 Type classifies the phenomenon of
language not of people. The E55 is relative to the phenomenon it
classifies/specializes. People are not language nor vice versa. One of
the things we would want to make possible in linking an E21 person to an
E57 Language is to create consistent and potentially serendipitous
relations between an instance of person and an instance of language. (As
one of Rob's examples: the work used E57 English and the person who
encountered it E5 was a knower of E57 English, ergo, they could but did
not necessarily read it!) This would not be facilitated by saying E21
Person p2 has type E55 "English Speaker" because there are no given
semantic connections between the instance "English Speaker" which
classified a person as a kind and the instance E57 Language "English"
which classifies linguistic phenomena.
The semantic intent, I would argue, in the schemas that document fields
like language and technique is often not to say that this person is of
type "English Speaker" or even of type "Painter" but that they have/had
knowledge of English (linguistic phenomenon) or Painting (technical
phenomenon). Because someone knows or uses a technique does make them
someone who would generally be classified (with regards to official
documentation) as being an exemplar of that language/technique. So as
Rob is not necessarily a 'French Speaker" though he knows French, George
is not necessarily a Painter, though he may have a knowledge of painting
notable enough to document. (It is counterfactual, I don't even have
this knowledge but for lack of a better example)
Human beings are an objective phenomenon that can be witnessed and have
certain behaviours and potentials which other phenomena do not, one of
which includes the ability to know. We should be able to document this
objective phenomenon because it falls within scope. The kind of
knowledge in question is not an act of knowing (temporal) but the result
of having learned and now acquired a new understanding which allows the
human being to act in the world in a new skillful way in certain
situations. This knowledge remains, more or less present, in the knower
without any particular activation once they have acquired it (forgetting
and rustiness not withstanding). It is simply one of their properties.
It's all a long winded way of saying that we need a relation between E21
Person (at least) to indicate that they have a knowledge. There should
be a binary property for this (which could then be extended) which
allows one to make the simple statement, A knows B. This would not be a
sub property of P2 has type, but a new property. I'm not sure if it
would have an existing superproperty. My original suggestion would be to
stick to language and then go for a super class, although the question
of technique also arises.
The other issues Rob and Franco raise about documenting fiat groups/sets
are very important but perhaps we could make them another discussion and
issue (when it comes time to formulating something particular for voting
on at SIG).
About the idea of making language a conceptual object, I think we would
have to have a lot of discussion and reflection on that, because it
seems like a large metaphysical issue. Language is obviously very
particular to human being, Aristotle called us the rational (logos)
animal. But it is not clear that logos is the invention of human being
or that it can be said to be something that we can use in a utilitarian
way like a pot or a mould. It seems more like a medium through which
certain types of communicative act can/do occur. Anyhow, also a fun
discussion but I think having a E21 person "has knowledge or / was use
of language" X property could be a modest first step that is
semantically robust to a real use case and can be extended by further
modelling without likely breaks to monotonic development.
Best,
George
On Tue, Aug 27, 2019 at 1:19 AM Franco Niccolucci
<franco.niccolu...@gmail.com <mailto:franco.niccolu...@gmail.com>> wrote:
Steve,
something for your breakfast tomorrow morning.
“Knowing” a language is not the same as “using” it. The case started
from documentation stating that somebody knows a language, but not
reporting any use, which is just potential but not necessarily
actual. For example, I know Latin pretty well, but I have very few -
if any - opportunities of using it; on the contrary, I do not know
Japanese but sometimes say “sayonara” and “arigato” appropriately.
In these Portuguese archives I would be correctly recorded as “Latin
speaker” but not as “Japanese speaker”.
Your solution instead refers to “using" the language as implied by
P16 and would state exactly the opposite.
I share with you the hate for negative searches, for the reasons you
clearly explain.
Bene valeas placideque quiescas, Stephane (*)
Francus
(*) in order to enable you in using P16 for my knowledge of Latin
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 23:32, Stephen Stead
<ste...@paveprime.org <mailto:ste...@paveprime.org>> ha scritto:
>
> Just thinking about this after an interesting game of Railroad
Revolution.
> It strike me that it might be useful to consider language as a
Conceptual Object and an Actors use of it would be an instance of E7
Activity P2 has type E55 Type {Communication} P16 used specific
object E28 Conceptual Object.
> E55 Type {Communication} could be sub-divided into written,
spoken, reading etc as necessary.
> The other stuff that Rob mentions is rather different and at
first glance looks a lot like the floruit from FRBR which became F51
Pursuit.
> I am concerned about building optimisations of properties that
are intended for making searches about negative things like “not
known to speak Latin” as this is a nasty place to be: absence of
Knowledge versus knowledge of absence……
>
> Use of a technique is that also the use of an immaterial object?
>
> Anyway off to bed now. Very interesting question
> TTFN
> SdS
>
>
>
>
> Stephen Stead
> Tel +44 20 8668 3075
> Mob +44 7802 755 013
> E-mail ste...@paveprime.com <mailto:ste...@paveprime.com>
> LinkedIn Profile https://www.linkedin.com/in/steads/
>
> From: Crm-sig <crm-sig-boun...@ics.forth.gr
<mailto:crm-sig-boun...@ics.forth.gr>> On Behalf Of Robert Sanderson
> Sent: 26 August 2019 18:54
> To: Franco Niccolucci <franco.niccolu...@gmail.com
<mailto:franco.niccolu...@gmail.com>>; George Bruseker
<george.bruse...@gmail.com <mailto:george.bruse...@gmail.com>>
> Cc: crm-sig@ics.forth.gr <mailto:crm-sig@ics.forth.gr>; "Runa,
Lucília" <lucilia.r...@dglab.gov.pt
<mailto:lucilia.r...@dglab.gov.pt>>; Barbedo, Francisco
<francisco.barb...@dglab.gov.pt <mailto:francisco.barb...@dglab.gov.pt>>
> Subject: Re: [Crm-sig] P72 has Language
>
>
> 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.
> o 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.
> o 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.
> o 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 <crm-sig-boun...@ics.forth.gr
<mailto:crm-sig-boun...@ics.forth.gr>> on behalf of Franco
Niccolucci <franco.niccolu...@gmail.com
<mailto:franco.niccolu...@gmail.com>>
> Date: Monday, August 26, 2019 at 8:26 AM
> To: George Bruseker <george.bruse...@gmail.com
<mailto:george.bruse...@gmail.com>>
> Cc: "crm-sig@ics.forth.gr <mailto:crm-sig@ics.forth.gr>"
<crm-sig@ics.forth.gr <mailto:crm-sig@ics.forth.gr>>, ""Runa,
Lucília"" <lucilia.r...@dglab.gov.pt
<mailto:lucilia.r...@dglab.gov.pt>>, "Barbedo, Francisco"
<francisco.barb...@dglab.gov.pt <mailto:francisco.barb...@dglab.gov.pt>>
> 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
<george.bruse...@gmail.com <mailto:george.bruse...@gmail.com>> 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
<c.e.s....@iln.uio.no <mailto:c.e.s....@iln.uio.no>> 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 <crm-sig-boun...@ics.forth.gr
<mailto:crm-sig-boun...@ics.forth.gr>> on behalf of Franco
Niccolucci <franco.niccolu...@gmail.com
<mailto:franco.niccolu...@gmail.com>>
>> Sent: 24 August 2019 19:45
>> To: Maria Jose de Almeida
>> Cc: crm-sig@ics.forth.gr <mailto:crm-sig@ics.forth.gr>; "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
<m-jose.alme...@dglab.gov.pt <mailto:m-jose.alme...@dglab.gov.pt>>
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
>> > m-jose.alme...@dglab.gov.pt <mailto:m-jose.alme...@dglab.gov.pt>
>> >
>> > _______________________________________________
>> > Crm-sig mailing list
>> > Crm-sig@ics.forth.gr <mailto:Crm-sig@ics.forth.gr>
>> > http://lists.ics.forth.gr/mailman/listinfo/crm-sig
>>
>>
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