Hi,
>
> Broader / narrower (b/n) might be said to simply be an indicator of
> the direction of a relationship between two terms; it does not define
> the relationship _type_. So the b/n relationship cosmology /
> cosmicBackground is that of a ‘subject area includes topic’
> relationship, Galaxy / seyfertGalaxy is a ‘type includes subtypes’
> relationship, and solarSystem / planet is a ‘has component or part’
> relationship.
>
It is actually more fundamental than that: b/n belongs to
abstraction/partition (is a/is a part of) categorization whereas
cosmology/cosmicBackground is an example of function (is about)
categorization which is associative rather than hierarchical.
>
> It would seem that a solution to the b/n conflict would be to allow a
> concept to belong to more than one broader concept, but this is not,
> AFAIK, possible in SKOS. I suspect we have to choose one of the
> following options:
>
Semantic technologies have so far really focussed on partition
categorization so as long as what you want to represent can be mapped
into a hierarchy you can represent it in terms of SKOS, etc. However,
I'm not really certain what the general technological solution for
function categorization is.
Cheers,
Matthew Received on 2007-09-18Z21:26:55