[sc34wg3] CTM: Association and semicolon

[Jaeho Lee]

I guess I haven't summarized well enough to express my claim.
In short,

(1) In some cultures, representations of association end up with a topic
accompanied by "slot-value" pairs. The "slot-value" pairs have been around
quite a while and I think it is culture-neutral.

(2) The slots and values are mostly in noun forms and thus topics and
associations are mostly indistinguishable in text. An end mark for every
slot-value pair thus would enhance readability 


---
 Jaeho Lee
 The University of Seoul


-----Original Message-----
From: sc34wg3-bounces at isotopicmaps.org [mailto:sc34wg3-bounces at isotopicmaps.
org] On Behalf Of Jaeho Lee
Sent: Sunday, February 03, 2008 4:50 PM
To: 'Discussion of ISO/IEC 13250 Topic Maps'
Subject: [sc34wg3] CTM: Association and semicolon

Hello all,
I couldn't find time for my promised 5 min lecture.
I wish someone can help me by letting me know if the followings apply also
in Japanese or Chinese.

(1) Most words in Korean sentences  get cases such as subjective,
objective, possessive cases by attaching distinguished auxiliary words
(postpositional word) to the main word. This is very similar to making  the
possessive case in English by attaching 's to a noun. For example, in
English, the word “boy” with ‘s attached, that is, “boy’s”  becomes a
possessive case. If you are familiar with prepositions such as “in”,
“with” and “by”, you will understand what I mean. Prepositions combined
with an object become adverb for instance in English. In terms of Topic
Maps concept, this is pretty much like specifying role types to roles in
associations.

(2) As you are well aware already, The order of cases in a sentence is
Subjective-Objective-Verb (SOV). The subjective and objective cases are
made mostly by postpositional words as explained in (1)

(3) This is most relevant to the “semicolon” argument. Associations such
as verb, adjective, adverb are only expressed with the associated cases
(roles). That means that it is hard to express the association alone
without the associated role cases. I will show you with an example later.
So typically associations represented as a NOUN in topic maps in Korean. I
guess this applies similarly to Japanese or Chinese. What happens then in
CTM without clear distinguished starting or ending mark in a sentence is a
series of all NOUNS. By just looking at one noun in the middle of a CTM
sentence, it is really hard to tell whether that noun is there as an
association or a topic. Of course with clever line breaking this problem
can be reduced, but it is apt to make a single mistake that will lead to
total misunderstanding.

Let me show you how this works, with an example, “Pucci was born in
Florence”. This English sentence will be translated roughly as follows.

Pucci was born in Florence (English) →  Pucci[neun] Florence[eseo]
Birth(noun)-to-verb-variation[notda]

The words in […] are postpositional words.

Representation in Topic Maps will be roughly as follows.

	Pucci born-in Florence.  → Pucci “Birth-Place” Florence

Note that I used a noun form “Birth-Place” for the “born-in”
association. If I used the original representation, “Birth(noun)-to-verb-
variation[notda]” for the “born-in” association, it wouldn't make sense
at all and would cause a lot of confusion, because of the SVO order(2) and
the case-assigning rule(1).

I am not sure if my “lecture” was clear enough for you to get the idea.
Please feel free to ask me if you need more explanations.
Thank you.

---
 Jaeho Lee
 The University of Seoul

-----Original Message-----
From: sc34wg3-bounces at isotopicmaps.org [mailto:sc34wg3-bounces at isotopicmaps.
org] On Behalf Of Lars Heuer
Sent: Saturday, February 02, 2008 12:09 AM
To: Discussion of ISO/IEC 13250 Topic Maps
Subject: Re: [sc34wg3] CTM: Realistic use cases or toy examples?

[...]
> I hope that Prof. Lee provides some arguments why { ; } help Koreans
> and other cultures.

...... otherwise this discussion is pretty useless because we've just two
opinions: pro and against semicolons. And I don't believe that someone
will add a new, compelling argument.

Explaining why { ; } helps cultures would bring us forward.

Best regards,
Lars
--
http://www.semagia.com

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