Re: [xml-dev] Does data represent things besides entities,attributes, an

["Seth Johnson" <seth.johnson@realmeasures.dyndns.org>]

Rick Jelliffe wrote:
> Michael Kay wrote:
> >  
> > To be honest, I'm not sure how either Abrial or RDF handle 
> > the universal quantifiers, but hopefully you get the idea. 
> > Basically, you're reducing the sentence to a set of basic 
> > assertions and reducing it to predicate logic in a number of 
> > variables, where the variables are the entities and the
> > predicates are the binary relationships.
> >   
> 
> This depends on the supposition that our data is facts, doesn't
> it?  I don't think that literature is facts, except by some
> vacuous definition that rules everything in. So a fact-based
> reduction of XML is not general.


Literature is composed of facts, even if the facts are symbols
representing fictional entities, etc. so thus they represent "the
fact that the author/work said" x, y, and z.

The difference between literature and other forms of expression is
that it is figurative -- it works by figurative effect of
juxtaposing various elements to suggest things, rather than
explicitly stating them.  A literary work doesn't have a thesis,
but is composed of elements that can be analyzed structurally for
their figurative (metaphorical, etc.) function.

RDF is abstract enough to model that.  It's abstract in order to
model generally.  What it can't model is the suggestive element,
except as supplied by the reader/interpreter -- which is always
provisional in the case of any figurative form of expression, be
it story, poetry, music, dance, etc., because the things such a
work expresses by figurative device are always plural and indefinite.

But you can model it.  You either model it directly as what it's
saying, always taking its assertions provisionally as about a
fictional context, or as "the author/work says/depicts" so the
assertions are about the author or work.


Seth

> Cheers
> Rick Jelliffe
> 
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