parid0159 | 16 Nov 2002 20:32:13
> > > Note 21: However, the subject of a role player > > > can be a group of subjects ...
> > I'm uneasy with that. Having several subjects
> > playing the same role in an assertion looks to me
> > more natural than having to create first a subject
> > which is a group of subjects ...  If I think I am
> > linked to my children by a "father-child"
> > relationship, have I to consider them first as a
> > group? Or if I don't want that, split this
> > assertion is so many assertions that I have
> > children.
> > I would like the rationale of Note 21 to be
> > expanded. On this father-child relationship, for
> > example.
—bernard.vatant@mondeca.com
parid0159 | Mon, 18 Nov 2002 19:05:08
It does not seem to me that your long answer addresses my question. I agree that if I want to speak about the set of my children, this set is a subject and has to be represented by a single node. But my question is why should I be forced into speaking about that set if I'm not interested in it? Why am I not allowed by RM to express in a single assertion. "Bernard is the father of Alice, of Claire and of Jan", without making any explicit assertion about the set {Alice, Claire, Jan}. Moreover, role type of each of my children in such an assertion ("child") is quite natural, but role type of the *set* seems difficult to conceive and name. I'm not the father of a set, but, certainly in different ways, the father of three distinct children, right? So in that case I suppose I have to utter three different assertions?
—bernard.vatant@mondeca.com