Plural vs Singular concepts, was there a resolution? (Was: Re: Ontology dynamics and vocabulary best practice

[Brian Thomas]

	Hi, 

	Was there ever a vote on whether we are using singular or plural
	to define concepts? I don't understand the argument to define plural
	concepts...this makes it difficult to actually define individuals or 
	instances of a concept if every concept has built into it a plurality.
	It also makes it difficult to auto-grab these terms from a dictionary,
	(I have been thinking of writing a script to scarf up terms from online
	dictionaries to insert under skos:definition). 

	Regards,

	=brian
 
ps. Ed has created a singular version of the thesaurus in SKOS.


On Tuesday 23 October 2007, Frederic V. Hessman wrote:
> > Pointer number one: an annotated bibliography of documents and web  
> > pages concerned with taxonomy and thesaurus management. This is at  
> > <http://www.nglis.org.uk/tipsbib.htm> (that document is Word-only,  
> > but it seems they're going to put a PDF version there soon, and  
> > there's an older PDF version at <http://www.govtalk.gov.uk/ 
> > documents/ Bibliography2005-05-11.pdf>). This came from a chat with  
> > a (paper) archivist colleague at Glasgow.
> 
> Thanks for these tips, Norman.
> 
> I flipped through a few of the entries - ugh!  All very interesting,  
> but it would be nice to have someone be able to step back, glance  
> around, and give us a few last (!) tips.  For instance at the  
> Introductory Tutorial on Thesaurus Construction, http:// 
> instruct.uwo.ca/gplis/677/thesaur/main00.htm#contents , I found the  
> following
> 
> Standardizing the Form of Words
> 
> Terms collected should already be nouns or noun phrases. Here are  
> some further guidelines for the form that terms should take in your  
> final thesaurus.
> Guidelines
> Examples
> Plural for things that can be counted
> "TUBES"
> Singular for "mass" nouns
> "WOOD"
> Singular for processes, properties, and conditions
> "REFRIGERATION"
> "WEIGHT",
> "POVERTY"
> Not inverted
> "RADAR ANTENNAS"
> (rather than "ANTENNAS, RADAR")
> Excluding prepositions
> "CARBOHYDRATE METABOLISM"
> (rather than "METABOLISM OF CARBOHYDRATES")
> Excluding punctuation marks, diacritics, special characters, and  
> abbreviations
> "COOPERATIVE PROGRAMS"
> (rather than "CO-OPERATIVE PROGRAMS" or "COÖPERATIVE PROGRAMS")
> "MUSICAL NOTES"
> (rather than "(MUSICAL) NOTES" or "MUS. NOTES"
> 
> I'm not sure what a "mass noun" is - probably those with no separate  
> plural (like "deer" and "information"?), but otherwise the rules  
> sounds reasonable and we've basically been following them (i.e. the  
> IAU thesaurus probably followed them).  Well, do we use "pre main  
> sequence stars" or "premain sequence stars" or can we simply keed  
> "pre-main sequence stars" (stars are "countable" so "stars" rather  
> than "star")?  Like all rules, I'm sure they are also made to be  
> broken....
> 
> I'll go through our list and see what things might need to be changed  
> based on these rules (assuming that we can keep a few hyphens after  
> all).
> 
> 
> > The 'Art and Architecture Thesaurus' is reportedly a much-cited  
> > model of good practice. It appears that archives people do indeed  
> > have drummed into them the substantial costs involved in creating  
> > or maintaining thesauri.
> 
> There are orders of magnitude more arts and architecture people out  
> there, so we shouldn't be too bashful about just now accepting the  
> idea that a thesaurus might be a good idea ;-)
> 
> On the other hand, the Art&Arch thesaurus has lots of nuances which  
> we really don't want to get into (yet):
> 	"="	for exact equivalence
> 	"+/-" for inexact equivalence ("more or less")
> 	"<" for partial equivalence
> 	"+" for single-to-multiple equivalence
> 	"NE" for non-equivalence
> 
> or how about this section to make life complicated:
> 
> IX. Plural and Singular Term Forms
> 
> The ISO standards recommend that each language be displayed following  
> its national standard even if this results in parallel displays in  
> both the singular and the plural. ISO 5964 states that in general the  
> singular is preferred in French and German thesauri, while the plural  
> is preferred in British English and American English thesauri.  
> Singular or plural use may also depend on the type of institution  
> that creates the vocabulary. The Anglo-American library community in  
> many cases prefers the plural for count nouns and the singular for  
> non-count nouns; the museum community often applies the singular for  
> both count and non-count nouns. The International Terminology Working  
> Group accepts both plural and singular use in participating  
> vocabularies according to the current usage of each. Equivalents are  
> acceptable between singular terms in one vocabulary and plural in the  
> other[17].
> 
> and they even  have an on-line term input form: http://www.chin.gc.ca/ 
> Resources/Publications/Guidelines/English/Appendices/example-mtts1.html
> 
> 
> Rick
> 
>