danbri2: Chumped for bijan. This was done last year sometime, superceded by events (n3, rdf-calendar etc; worth revisiting?)
danbriBRS: "A definite description is the + a noun phrase: the present king of France, the first dog born at sea, the bed, the smallest positive number that is both greater than any multiple of 3 and divisible by 7".
danbriBRS: "Grammatically, definite descriptions behave like proper names (Richard Nixon, China, etc.): they fit into sentences in exactly the same places proper names do."
danbriBRS: I've been wondering what the equivalent would be for a hypothetical RDF 2.0: allowing (possibly complex) referring expressions anywhere we currently allow URI names.
danbriBRS: This would probably become hideous rather quickly, eg. those expressions could themselves use a mix of URIs and definite description referring expressions.
AaronSw: I've always thought it interesting that in N3, the stuff in side the square brackets could be a definite description... i.e. [ a :King ; :country :France] :eats "Potatoes" . => The King of France eats Potatoes.
AaronSw: Although as it stands, there is no semantic distinction between what's in the brackets and what's not.
DanC_: actually, {[ a :King ; :country :France] :eats "Potatoes" .} means "A king of France eats potatoes". But if you know that, for example, :France has just one :King, you can indeed conclude "The King of France eats potatoes".
DanC_: this is akin to the convention I've been using for functions: f(x) becomes [ is :f of :x].
DanC_: if you know :f is a ont:UniqueProperty (aka functional) then there's exactly one thing that [is :f of :x] for any :x.
DanC_: oops... there's at most one thing that [is :f of :x] for any :x, that is.
danbriBRS: "Grammatically, definite descriptions behave like proper names (Richard Nixon, China, etc.): they fit into sentences in exactly the same places proper names do."
danbriBRS: I've been wondering what the equivalent would be for a hypothetical RDF 2.0: allowing (possibly complex) referring expressions anywhere we currently allow URI names.
danbriBRS: This would probably become hideous rather quickly, eg. those expressions could themselves use a mix of URIs and definite description referring expressions.
AaronSw: I've always thought it interesting that in N3, the stuff in side the square brackets could be a definite description... i.e. [ a :King ; :country :France] :eats "Potatoes" . => The King of France eats Potatoes.
AaronSw: Although as it stands, there is no semantic distinction between what's in the brackets and what's not.
DanC_: actually, {[ a :King ; :country :France] :eats "Potatoes" .} means "A king of France eats potatoes". But if you know that, for example, :France has just one :King, you can indeed conclude "The King of France eats potatoes".
DanC_: this is akin to the convention I've been using for functions: f(x) becomes [ is :f of :x].
DanC_: if you know :f is a ont:UniqueProperty (aka functional) then there's exactly one thing that [is :f of :x] for any :x.
DanC_: oops... there's at most one thing that [is :f of :x] for any :x, that is.