Re: [Crm-sig] Issue 624, linguistic Appellation

Athanasios Velios via Crm-sig Mon, 19 Dec 2022 08:50:23 -0800

Dear all,

Just to remind you that there is some documentation forE33_E41_Linguistic_Appellation in the RDFS implementation guidelinesdocument:


https://cidoc-crm.org/sites/default/files/issue%20443%20-%20Implementing%20CIDOC%20CRM%20in%20RDF%20v1.1.pdf

in the section "Language of an Appellation". Perhaps extending thatsection would be useful with any details that George and Rob think aremissing. I have just noticed as well that the property 'P72 haslanguage' is mentioned in a confusing way in that section as it does notapply directly to E41 and there is also no mention of multipleinstantiation.

Following Francesco's message, isn't LRM Nomen a good choice to addresslinks to language?


Thanasis

On 16/12/2022 14:11, Robert Sanderson via Crm-sig wrote:

While this is interesting, the issue is not to re-engineer names andlanguages from first principles. There is an existing class,E33_E41_Linguistic_Appellation, which is in use in many projects andproducts around the world. The issue, as raised by George, is that it isthought that it would be better for this class to have documentationoutside of the RDFS document that defines it technically.


There are two possible outcomes of this issue:

1. It is agreed that there should be human-intended documentation forthe class, and then that documentation gets written forE33_E41_Linguistic_Appellation.2. It is not agreed that there should be human-intended documentationfor the class, and documentation gets written outside of CIDOC-CRM.

Rob

On Fri, Dec 16, 2022 at 5:05 AM Francesco Beretta via Crm-sig<crm-sig@ics.forth.gr <mailto:crm-sig@ics.forth.gr>> wrote:


    Dear Martin, Rob,

    If we consider the intended phenomenon in reality, we can observe
    (through everyday experience or documentation) that humans use names
    for identifying things. Insofar as humans live in cultural contexts,
    and these are realized through languages, these names are in some
    way related to, or valid in different languages.

    If we stick to the ontological substance of E41 Appellation, we can
    observe that people can use the "The Big Apple" appellation to
    identify New York City even in sentences expressed in other
    languages than English, and possibly without even understanding the
    meaning of this expression.

    This phenomenon, which occurs on Earth in billions of instances at
    every moment, can be expressed, or has been expressed in the context
    of CIDOC CRM in three ways:

      * in using frbroo:F52 Name Use Activity
        <https://ontome.net/class/262/namespace/6> which, as a subclass
        of crm:E7 Activity <https://ontome.net/class/7/namespace/1>,
        captures the information about the dynamic of human groups in
        space and time and thus in a linguistic context. One could
        interpret sdh:C11 Appellation in a Language
        <https://ontome.net/class/365/namespace/3> in this sense and add
        a property situating the activity in a linguistic context
      * in using LRM Nomen as Martin proposes. The concerned
        propositional object captures the /intentional conten/t (as
        social philosophers would say) of the belief that this
        appellation is validly usable, i. e. understandable in this
        language in order to identify a thing
      * in using sdh:C11 Appellation in a Language
        <https://ontome.net/class/365/namespace/3> as it was originally
        modelled in a social perspective, i.e. as a subclass of
        Intentional State or State of Mind, situating in a temporal
        region (as temporal phenomenon) the fact that a thing is
        considered as being validly named with this appellation in a
        linguistic and social context. This is the perspective of CRMsoc
        with a domain that complements CRMbase from the 'inside'
        perspective (in the sense of intention carryied in the
        _individual_ minds) and (indirectly) through observable
        phenomena and documentation. Therefore not a State as
        alternative to Event (in the same CRMbase domain) but something
        else, a sort of quality of the minds of the believers —a state
        of mind— of the LRM Nomen instance.


    This said, one can consider the property crm:P1 is identified by
    (identifies) <https://ontome.net/property/1/namespace/1> as a
    shortcut and abstraction of this phenomenon, regardless of the ways
    of expressing it summarized above, relating the /intended entity/
    with an /appellation/ of it.

    In the same perspective of abstraction and simplification, and in my
    opinion as a robust way, without adding subclasses of Persistent
    Item which risks to be cumbersome and their substance not well
    defined and rigid/disjoint, I'd be in favor, as already expressed,
    of adding an additional property:

    E41 Appellation --> P... is used in --> E56 Language

    as a shortcut of another aspect of sdh:C11 Appellation in a Language
    <https://ontome.net/class/365/namespace/3> (without engaging for the
    moment in defining what this class is)


    This solution seems to cope with the problem and brings the
    information to the conceptual model in a concise and stringent way,
    without engaging in the ontological discussion about the language in
    which an appellation *is* (was it created in this language? is it
    used as such? etc. etc.).

    The substance of the property, given all the examples you brought,
    seems to be quite clear: the property expresses the observable fact
    (in documentation and every day life) that an appellation is used in
    a language (by an intentional community or society — not necessarily
    a group with potential of acting together) as a valid identifier of
    an entity.

    Best
    Francesco


    Le 15.12.22 à 20:38, Martin Doerr via Crm-sig a écrit :

    Dear Robert,

    On 12/15/2022 4:57 PM, Robert Sanderson wrote:


    This doesn't meet the requirements, unfortunately.

    To my best understanding, and of others on this list, it has not
    made sufficiently clear so far by you which semantics the
    linguistic Appellation should comprise.  Following our
    methodology, requirements must be backed up by representative
    examples that allow for narrowing down the senses to be comprised.
    The do not come from authority.

    Most examples provided so far did not demonstrate the independence
    of the language specificity of the Appellation from the individual
    identified by it, but exactly the opposite. The difference is a
    matter of fundamental logic of semantic networks, and cannot be
    ignored.

    Examples must be sufficiently representative for a large set of
    data. TGN, for instance, is huge, and domainßinstance specific.
    VIAF refers to national libraries, not to languages. "The Big
    Apple" is a rather rare case of a complete English noun phrase
    used as a place name, which exactly fits the scope note of E41. It
    could be documented as Title. Transliteration, you mentioned, does
    not create a language specificity, but a script specificity.

    Please respect that it belongs to our method to discuss, if the
    sense of an original submission actually represents the best
    semantics fit for purpose, and to modify it if needed. I simply
    act here, as any CRM-SIG member should, as a knowledge engineer
    based on the examples you and others provided and try to propose
    the most adequate solution, and not to defend any position. I do
    not have any other project of my own. Please stay in your answers
    on the level of arguments based on representative examples and
    their interpretation.


    sdh:C11 is a temporal entity -- the state of being named
    something -- and not a name itself. While interesting, as
    previously States have been widely decreed as an anti-pattern to
    be avoided, it does not meet the requirements set forth for
    E33_E41, which is that an Appellation itself can have a Language.

    Indeed I may not describe C11 as a State in the sense we discussed
    it. It is as timeless as all our properties of persistent items.
    States are better avoided if temporal inner bounds are to be
    given, because they require complete observation, a sort of Closed
    World. This is not the case here. But this distracts from the
    question to what the language here pertains.

    To repeat, if E33_41 is to enter unmodified CRMbase as you
    propose, it needs a scope note and examples that disambiguate
    scope and senses.  Then, *it must* be differentiated from
    domain-instance specific use, and the relevance
    of the remaining scope must be argued. All examples must be
    discussed and voted for.

    Rather than an anonymous "requirement set forth", I definitely
    would like to see your examples of use of E33_41 in your
    applications. Is that possible? Are you sure they fit the
    independence from the domain instance? Are you sure there will be
    no abuse in the sense I, Francesco and LRM propose?

    Best,

    Martin


    So I believe that this does not solve the problem as stated -
    that E33_E41_Linguistic_Appellation does not have a description
    outside of the RDFS document.

    Rob


    On Wed, Dec 14, 2022 at 3:54 PM Martin Doerr via Crm-sig
    <crm-sig@ics.forth.gr <mailto:crm-sig@ics.forth.gr>> wrote:

        Dear Francesco, dear George,

        After the discussion in the last CRM SIG meeting, I propose
        to follow Francesco's "sdh:C11 Appellation in a Language
        <https://ontome.net/class/365/namespace/3> class." as *a
        longpath for P1*.

        I propose to generalize the context. It could be a language,
        it could be a country, a Group. I propose to analyze, if this
        can be mapped or identified with LRM Nomen and its
        properties. It can further be made compatible with the RDF
        labels with a language tag, which are domain instance
        specific and not range specific, and of course can represent
        the TGN language attributes. For VIAF, we would need a
        "national" context, i.e., the national library.

        Best,

        Martin


        On Sat, 12 Nov 2022, 2:43 pm Francesco Beretta via Crm-sig,
        <crm-sig@ics.forth.gr <mailto:crm-sig@ics.forth.gr>> wrote:

            Dear Martin, all

            Sorry to intervene so late in this interesting exchange,
            I was away for some days and I'm going through my emails
            now.

            I encountered the same questions while working a few
            years ago in a history project interested in the
            evolution of the use of names and surnames.

            The approach of the project was similar to the one
            presented by Martin below and amounted to saying that it
            is difficult to state to which language a first name, or
            surname, belongs in itself, except for some cases or if
            we consider the region of origin, but what is relevant
            is that this specific string of characters is used at a
            given time (and attested in the sources) in a language
            or in another (i.e. in a society speaking this language)
            to identify a person or an object.

            To capture the information envisaged in the project in
            the sense of this approach I decided to stick to the
            substance of crm:E41 Appellation class:

            "This class comprises signs, either meaningful or not,
            or arrangements of signs following a specific syntax,
            that are used or can be used to refer to and identify a
            specific instance of some class or category within a
            certain context. Instances of E41 Appellation do not
            identify things by their meaning, even if they happen to
            have one, but _instead by convention, tradition, or
            agreement_." (CRM 6.2).

            and to add in what has become the SDHSS CRM unofficial
            extension the sdh:C11 Appellation in a Language
            <https://ontome.net/class/365/namespace/3> class.

            This class has as you'll see a clear social, i.e.
            intentional flavor, and captures the information that
            some appellation is considered as a valid appellation of
            a thing in a language (i.e. society speaking his
            language) during an attested time-span.

            This was also an attempt to cope with the frbroo:F52
            Name Use Activity issue:

            413 Pursuit and Name Use Activity to CRMsoc
            
<https://cidoc-crm.org/Issue/ID-413-pursuit-and-name-use-activity-to-crmsoc>
            573 CRMsoc & F51 Pursuit & F52 Name Use Activity
            
<https://cidoc-crm.org/Issue/ID-573-crmsoc-f51-pursuit-f52-name-use-activity>

            which is somewhat slowed down by the ongoing exchanges
            around the nature and substance of the social world as
            foundation of the CRMsoc extension.

            But one could easily provide another substance to an
            /Appellation in a Language/ class making it a Name Use
            Activity (in a Language) class (and subclass of crm:E13
            Attribute Assignment
            <https://ontome.net/class/13/namespace/1> or crm:E7
            Activity).

            This would be in my opinion a good way of coping with
            the wish expressed by George at the beginning of this
            exchange to "make [this kind of classes] full classes in
            the standard so that they are fully vetted and
            controlled. It is a fundamental class. It should be in
            the standard in the first place", wish that I definitely
            share. And also to stick, as far as I can understand, to
            the modelling principles reminded by Martin.

            And it would also finally solve the issues still open,
            to my knowledge, concerning the original FRBR-oo class.

            Best

            Francesco

--------------------------------------

          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)391625Email:mar...@ics.forth.gr <mailto:mar...@ics.forth.gr>Web-site:http://www.ics.forth.gr/isl <http://www.ics.forth.gr/isl>


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--Rob Sanderson

    Director for Cultural Heritage Metadata
    Yale University