Ont:+Vocab:

[Alasdair J G Gray]

Ed Shaya wrote:
> Why not add another element "pluralLabel" or just "plural"? 
> Alternatively, one can add an attribute as in
> <skos:altLabel number="plural" >Supernovae</skos:altLabel >. More 
> information at virtually no cost. There is nothing sacrosanct about 
> the SKOS attributes.
I would suggest that we extend the skos:altLabel with our own 
pluralLabel which has the properties of the alternative label but is 
used to capture the plural form of a term, i.e. pluralLabel would 
inherit the properties of the skos:altLabel.
> Did anyone notice the new WD at the W3C "SKOS Reference" placed on Jan 
> 25, 2008?
>
> http://www.w3.org/TR/skos-reference/
>
> It describes the OWL Ontology of SKOS.  At the end there is a section 
> on extending SKOS, but it just has TODO for now.
Yep, been perusing this for a while and adjusting things in the 
vocabularies document appropriately.

Alasdair
>
>
> Ed
>
> Rob Seaman wrote:
>> 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
>>
>

-- 
Dr Alasdair J G Gray
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