Plural terms and their multiple definitions

[Rob Seaman]

Alasdair J G Gray wrote:

> The above is not quite true, it is all down to our usage. It is  
> entirely possible to create a vocabulary that has separate concepts  
> for the singular and plural versions of any given term. It has been  
> an unwritten assumption that in this work we have been treating them  
> as somehow "equivalent" and hence using altLabels.

and

> I agree with Ed that each term/concept in a vocabulary should  
> contain just one preferred label and more importantly one  
> definition. The whole point of this work is to be able to  
> distinguish between the multiple meanings of terms.

Well, if the only recourse provided is to include separate terms for  
singular and plural, e.g., for SN and for SNe, then it is certainly  
preferred to attach them as altLabels to the same concept.

The flip side of distinguishing distinct meanings is to reliably NOT  
distinguish variations of the same meaning...  However, I must still  
believe that the librarians have some way not only of seeing that SN  
and SNe refer to the same objects (well, subjects), but to go further  
and perceive the difference in number expressed.  Dictionaries will  
list the plural under the singular's heading, but do provide  
information to tell the two apart.

After all, the definition of "nose" is something like "that unique  
thing on your face", while the definition (or, at least, crossword  
clue) for "noses" might be "puntillitas for Hannibal".  Which is to  
say that plural and singular point to distinct definitions in the  
strictest interpretation.  I'm not arguing that we fuss about this -  
but again, what is the SKOS commenting convention so that our  
altLabels can be tuned to be responsive to our purposes?

> Absolutely. There are no limits on the number of alternative labels.  
> Of course, the applications that make use of the vocabularies will  
> have to be wary that the same label can be used for different  
> concepts and get the user to clarify which of the meanings they  
> intended. This is why it is so important to have definitions for the  
> terms as the application would only be able to display the labels  
> back to the user if the definitions did not exist.

Isn't displaying the labels precisely the point, though?  A user (or  
other source) provides a token.  That token is not part of the  
controlled vocabulary, but rather is a label.  The label is as likely  
to be an altLabel as a prefLabel.  We can probably assure that the  
prefLabels are mapped both surjectively and injectively (i.e., "one-to- 
one correspondence" or "if and only if", etc.) onto the controlled  
concepts, but we've convincing demonstrated that we'll never arrange  
this for the altLabels.

Thus there is a dialogue with the user, parroting not the altLabels  
(and not the definitions), but rather the prefLabels for all matching  
terms back for the user to select.  Perhaps the labels won't be  
enough, in that case other information about the terms would be  
available - but not just the definitions (short or long), but the  
narrower and broader thans, etc.  I actually think the latter will be  
of more utility than the former in further limiting the search.  "Do  
you mean the "Milky Way" that is narrower than "candy bar", or rather  
the "Milky Way" that is narrower than "spiral galaxy" that is narrower  
than "galaxy"?

(Which, of course, raises the question of denoting proper names, key  
for the constellation vocabulary, among others :-)

But the first scenario is surely to focus altLabels down to  
prefLabels, right?  What else would the definition of "prefLabel" be?

- Rob