Re: [ontolog-forum] CL, CG, IKL and the relationship between symbols in

[jayanosy@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx]

Duane,

I would really like to see response
from the semantic community on this question, since the XML hierarchy described
illustrates concerns I have about implicit semantics when applying XML
approaches.

Initially I thought the different paths
through the hierarchy demonstrated different 'sense' of meaning in an intensional
manner, like the well known 'morning star' and the 'evening star' examples
accomplish. But on further consideration it appears that they have different
referents, a buyer in one case and a seller in another case, assuming that
a buyer and seller on a purchase order cannot be the same referent. So
in some sense there is not a different context, but rather a different
name with a different referents, so no problem of context here, nor a problem
of different sense with the same referent.


The following describes a few of my
simple attempts to understand the semantics of  the hierarchy. 

Let's assume the domain of discourse
contains real world obects that are:

Humans
Buyers
Sellers
PurchaseOrders

Let's assume that Humans have names,
and expecially first names for this example.

//PurchaseOrder/BuyerParty/FirstNameOfHuman

I can imagine different types of semantic
realtionships defined for the hierarchy, some make sense and others don't.

Option 1: Class/SubClass relationship
hierarchy with membership rule stating that a member of a subclass is a
member of the parent class, and so on

From the above XML hierarchy a BuyerParty
is not an instance of a PurchaseOrder so semantic model definition does
not appear to work. Also an instance of a Name is not an instance of a
human but rather a social property associated with a human.

Option 2-: Aggregation relationship
- where the parent class is constructed from members of other classes.
An example would be a car with component elements of 'engine', 'exhaustsystem',
'steeringsystem', etc.

In the car aggregation example we can
clearly define an aggregation semantic relationship to  define a model
that will represent all of the elements of a car. 

Is a purchase order constructed in the
same manner? I don't think so since the real world referents are not elements
of a purchase order but have other semantic relationships to a purchase
order.

Does a PurchaseOrder have as a constituent
element a Buyer or Seller? I suspect that a Buyer or Seller has some form
of commitment relationship represented by the purchase order instance.


The committment semantic realtionship
could be stated as:

purchaseCommittment(PurchaseOrder, BuyerParty)
supplyCommittment(PurchaseOrder, SellerParty)

Does a BuyerParty really have as a constituent
element a FirstNameOfHuman? I suspect that a name is not considered a constituent
element of a human but rather a social property associated with a human
for identification purposes. Thus I would think that the semantic relationship
between BuyerParty and FirstNameofHuman would be some form of property
identification relationship.

hasIdentfier(BuyerParty, FirstNameofHuman)
hasIdentifier(SellerParty, FirstnameofHuman)


Option 3 - Defined Semantic Relationships

With these new relationships we have
a new semantic structure as follows.

PurchaseOrder  ------purchaseCommittment
 ---- BuyerParty
           
                    ------supplyCommittment
 ---- SellerParty


BuyerParty ------ hasIdentifier  ----
FirstNameofHuman
SellerParty ----- hasIdentifier  ---FirstNameofHuman


This type of structure clarifies the
semantic relationships between purchase order information elements and
the referents in the domain that the purchase order entails. I have used
simple binary property relationships between terms representing objects
in the domain. Obviously with this semantic structure it is possibled to
represent in an explicit semantic manner the conventional meanings asociated
with the information elements of a purchase order and the relationships
to the terms used for referents in the domain of discourse.

So I think that these different hierarchy
examples do not represent different contexts with different semantic interpretations
as a result of context shifts, but rather different labels having different
referents. I also think that the semantics of the XML hierarchy are not
explicit in the XML representation and could be misinterpreted by software
developers not familair with the uses and conventions associated with prushase
orders. Worse different organizatiosn may have different semantic understandings
of the information elements of a purchase order due to their organizations
business rules or processes.

Use of XML for Context Metadata

This discussion I leave to the larger
community, of whether simple XML elements could be useful in a context
representation, I suspect not.








Best Regards,
John A. Yanosy Jr.

Cell: 214-336-9875
PH: 972-705-1807
Email: JAYANOSY@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx

Duane Nickull <dnickull@xxxxxxxxx>
Sent by: ontolog-forum-bounces@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx

01/08/2008 10:48 AM

Please respond to
"[ontolog-forum] " <ontolog-forum@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>

To	"[ontolog-forum]" <ontolog-forum@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>
cc
Subject	Re: [ontolog-forum] CL, CG, IKL and the relationship between symbols in the logical "universe of discourse" and individuals in the "real world"

John:

As someone who mapped XML to EDI and other formats, this statement gave
us
lots of things to think about:


On 1/8/08 6:47 AM, "John F. Sowa" <sowa@xxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:

>      * Syntax.  The syntactic function of context
is to group, delimit,
> quote, or package a section of text.

The issue arises when one builds automatic mappers based on metadata
artifacts stored in a registry-repository.  Even if we sit down and
agree on
the semantics of "First Name of Human Being" as a data element
and give it a
metadata representation term of "FirstNameOfHuman" (type=string)
and
constrain the instance values of a list of pre-approved names, there is
a
syntactic context issue at mapping.

If it appears in Xan XML instance of a purchase order using the Xpath syntax
in the hierarchic context of:

//PurchaseOrder/BuyerParty/FirstNameOfHuman

The exact same data element has slightly different semantics (strictly
in
the context of mapping to another instance of XML) if it appears in a
different hierarchic context of:

//PurchaseOrder/SellerParty/FirstNameOfHuman

As the BuyerParty vs. Seller Party hierarchic context qualifies the data
element.

Is this the type of syntax context you refer to?

Duane

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