Dear George, All,
As a second thought:
I think documentation formats such as LIDO are an adequate place to add
such useful properties to characterize items in a more detailed way, we
would not put in the CRM analytically. Shapes, colors etc. being typical
examples.
Question: Are there formats from the archival world that use to describe
the languages people speak? EAD CFP?
Libraries are interested in the languages someone publishes in, not
speaking.
What are the anthropologists registering? Would they be interested in
languages learned at school, or rather in the language used for
communication in a typical group? Would they document people being
incapable of communicating in that group?
Or just infer language via group?
How to distinguish native speakers from non-native?
Would historians make cases of people that could not communicate in a
given language, with societal effects?
What about illiterate people? Speaking, not writing...? Maintaining oral
history with great precision, etc.
What about creoles ?
Best,
Martin
On 10/14/2019 7:33 PM, Martin Doerr wrote:
Dear George,
The first principle of all is are there relevant queries that need
that property for integrating disparate sources, which indeed provide
such data, and is that research one we like to support with the CRM?
Second, using p2 on E21 does the job, doesn't it? What is the added
value of "knows language"?
Next principle, keep the ontology small. Querying 1000 properties is
already more than anybody can keep in mind. Each additional property
has an implementation cost. We need strong arguments for relevance.
It has been the mos t important success factor of the CRM to keep the
ontology small and still expressive enough. If we loose this
discipline, we will loose the whole project.
Finally, we are not repeating in the CRM the way typically information
systems document, but always tried to find a more fundamental
representation. With that argument, we could never have introduced
events. They did NOT appear in any of the typical systems at that
time.**It is a principle *not *to model all the valuable description
elements, which are relevant to characterize an item, but not creating
interesting links across resources.
I did not say that it is a personal opinion that someone speaks a
language. I said, this is observable. I document: Franco has spoken
Latin, repeatedly? But talking about skills, is another level, it
introduces a quality, which is hard to objectify, as Franco has
pointed out. Actually, it is a typical classification problem, with
all its boundary case questions, and the CRM is about relations
between particulars.
So, what is the*added value* against p2, and what are the typical
research data and typical research questions for *integrating* such
data, that cannot be answered with P2?
Best,
martin
On 10/14/2019 4:24 PM, George Bruseker wrote:
Dear Martin,
Which is CEO’s proposition that you support? It gets lost in the
string. Do you mean that a) a person speaking a language means being
part of a group, or b) using the p2 on E21 and then make types for
’Speakers of...'
I am (still and very much ) a supporter of a new property ‘knows
language'. I do not think that the group solution works because of
the identify criteria of groups. I also don’t think the event
solution is necessary (another suggestion that has floated in this
conversation). It is often the case that for person we do not know
events of their acquisition or use of language or a skill but we do
have proposition that they had that language or skill! I also don’ t
support the ‘English Speakers’ type solution since it provides a
different URI than the URI for ‘English’ and forces more, obscure,
modelling.
Another CIDOC CRM principle is model at the level of knowledge that
is typically present in information systems. Again, I think the
present case (people know languages) is identical to the case of
E22 consists of E57 Material
This is a typical piece of knowledge held about an object. It would
be obtuse to insist that one should create an event node to indicate
the manner of this material becoming the constituting material of the
object when we don’t know this fact. This is why CRM represents such
binary relations, because they are real, they are a level of
knowledge and they are observable.
If someone has entered into an information system George: English,
Pot Making, it is unlikely that what they want to reconstruct are
instances of me using English or performing Pot making. Rather they
are interested that there is an individual which has a particular
formation which means that he knows language x, knows skill x. This
information is probably used in an actual integration to connect an
instance of E21 via an instance of E57 Language to for example E33
that use the same E57.
It would seem we need some sort of hierarchy in the principles which
can also be conflicting.
My approach is not documenting skills*.* My approach is documenting
facts, rather than potentials. I take notice and may document that
you spoke Latin, as I have done last time at school. I have a
document stating my grade in Latin at high school. My grade at high
school confirms a set of years of continued successful lessons, not
that I could understand much Latin now;-).
Speaking a language can be documented as an extended (observed)
activity, as in FRBRoo.
It may be, but is it typically? I have never seen an information
system, especially in museum context that would.
For instance, someone writing books in particular language. This
falls under any kind of extended activity not further specified,
such as an artist using a technique for some time, and avoids
transforming actual activities into potentials.
We can document someone's documented opinion about a potential of a
person, as an information object.
That would make this information mostly unusable however. If our goal
is to functionally use the observation person x speaks language y,
then it needs to be semantically represented and not made a string.
In the "Principles for Modelling Ontologies" we refer:
"7.2 Avoid concepts depending on a personal/ spectator perspective"
This could be elaborated more. In the CRM, we do not model concepts
"because people use them", but because they can be used to
integrated information related to them with URIs. Therefore, your
arguments and what I wanted to say is, "skill" is a bad concept for
integration. What should be instantiated are the observable
activities, which may or may not indicate skills.
I don’t see that this principle applies. It is not a personal
perspective that someone speaks a language, anymore than it is a
personal perspective that an object is constituted of a material.
This fact can be documented and observed. Someone else can come and
do the same. Don’t believe Franco can speak Latin? Watch him and see
if he can. When someone writes in an information system, they
probably typically mean, some evidence leads me to assert Person y
knows language y. They do not mean to say at some point in the past
he learned it, or at some point he performed it.
In the case of documenting that someone knows a language this can be
used practically to integrate using URIs just in case we use the same
URI for English that we use to describe a document and that we use to
describe the knowledge of the individual
E21 knows language E57 Language URI:AA
E33 has language E57 Language URI:AA
answers the query, who in this graph knew the language this document
was written in.
Functionally, the issue for me is, is there a good reason against
adding a binary property off of person which can indicate their
knowledge ability and connect to a well known URI for a language.
Best,
George
--
------------------------------------
Dr. Martin Doerr
Honorary Head of the
Center for Cultural Informatics
Information Systems Laboratory
Institute of Computer Science
Foundation for Research and Technology - Hellas (FORTH)
N.Plastira 100, Vassilika Vouton,
GR70013 Heraklion,Crete,Greece
Vox:+30(2810)391625
Email:[email protected]
Web-site:http://www.ics.forth.gr/isl
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--
------------------------------------
Dr. Martin Doerr
Honorary Head of the
Center for Cultural Informatics
Information Systems Laboratory
Institute of Computer Science
Foundation for Research and Technology - Hellas (FORTH)
N.Plastira 100, Vassilika Vouton,
GR70013 Heraklion,Crete,Greece
Vox:+30(2810)391625
Email: [email protected]
Web-site: http://www.ics.forth.gr/isl
