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Add new terminology document #103

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Add new terminology document
niklasl Jan 12, 2024
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Update docs/wg-terminology.md
niklasl Jan 12, 2024
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niklasl Jan 12, 2024
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# Working Group Terminology

Clarifications and additions.

### RDF Triple
[RDF Triples are defined in RDF 1.2](https://www.w3.org/TR/rdf12-concepts/#section-triples).

Sometimes informally called: "Triple Type", "Abstract Triple".

### Asserted Triple

A triple is asserted with respect to a graph, when it is an element of a graph.
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I am proposing an alternative term here: "Triple Membership". I see two advantages of this term:

  1. It can be used as a noun (like it is also possible for terms such as "triple occurrence" and "triple instance"). In other words, it allows us to talk about making statements about a membership of a triple (in some graph), which is not possible for the term "assertion" because the word "assertion" may also be understood as the action of asserting.
  2. It does not carry any meaning with respect to semantics. In contrast, the term "asserted triple" already implies something regarding the semantics. (Note that I am not saying that we should revisit the question of whether a triple that is a member/element of a graph is considered as asserted within this graph. I am just saying that the term "membership" allows us to talk about triples in graphs in a semantically neutral way. The property of a triple being asserted in a graph is something that we define based on the property of a triple being a member of a graph.)

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I think this is a valuable distinction. A graph is defined as a set of triples, so certainly each triple is a member of that set. With that, we should also:

  1. State that "When a triple is a member of a graph, the statement it represents is asserted."
  2. Define "Asserted Statement" as "The statement is asserted with respect to the meaning of the graph."

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Text from RDF 1.2 Concepts

This hasn't changed from RDF 1.1:

https://www.w3.org/TR/rdf12-concepts/#resources-and-statements

Asserting an RDF triple says that some relationship, indicated by the predicate, holds between the resources denoted by the subject and object.

New text in RDF 1.2 Concepts (added 2023-04-27): w3c/rdf-concepts@1d02fff

https://www.w3.org/TR/rdf12-concepts/#section-triples:

An asserted triple is an RDF triple that is an element of an RDF graph.

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Thank you @afs. Then we should not change the terminology (i.e. keep "Asserted triple" and definition; in fact we should just reference the definition that is in 1.2).

Looking at https://www.w3.org/TR/rdf12-concepts/#entailment:

An RDF triple encodes a statement—a simple logical expression, or claim about the world.

and again at https://www.w3.org/TR/rdf12-concepts/#resources-and-statements:

This statement corresponding to an RDF triple is known as an RDF statement.

I see three aspects to this:

  1. Abstract syntax: the triple is an element of the graph.
  2. Formal semantics: the triple is asserted.
  3. Expression: the meaning of the statement (i.e. the relationship in the universe of discourse) that the asserted triple encodes (within the context of the graph, given a chosen interpretation).

(In suggesting "asserted statement" I conflated 2 and 3. I'm not sure if I differentiate 1 and 2 correctly.)


### RDF Statement

[RDF Statements are defined in RDF 1.2](https://www.w3.org/TR/rdf12-concepts/#dfn-rdf-statement).

(See also [N-quads statement](https://www.w3.org/TR/rdf12-n-quads/#grammar-production-statement).)

The statement is the meaning of the triple.

The triple is the representation of the statement.

### Triple Occurrence
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Perhaps we should continue to use reification terminology and call this a Triple Token.

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This is the key piece of terminology. It is not going to be easy to find the right word(s).

A triple is a thing in the RDF data model. We have been saying it is a "type" in the sense of a abstract descriptive concept. Is "triple" a class? It hasn't been described like that in RDF to-date. https://www.w3.org/TR/rdf12-concepts/#section-triples

If occurrence is part of the RDF data model, the "token" quality seems more like a named occurrence. A named occurrence is a resource (or a blank node that is mapped to resources by "A", the bnode mapping). There can be several named occurrences (resources) for one occurrence.

When we can define terminology, we do need to consider if the word is already in use in RDF. "Instance" has been suggested but in RDF that brings in "an instance of a class".

Currently, I prefer a name that is not taken from this abstract theoretical framework; rather one that is closer to how it it is used in RDF. Words like "occurrence", "usage", "mention" - all of which bring their own implication-baggage, including they should be "possible occurrence" etc because of itself, it doesn't assume the triple is in-use/asserted anywhere. I doubt we'll find a perfect word.

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re: "instance", also consider "instance data"


*[TODO: Pending rough draft.]*

Sometimes informally called: "Triple Instance".

An *occurrence* of a triple is a *possible use* of it (presumably *through* but not *as* [tokens](https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/types-tokens/#Occ)), on the level of the abstract syntax.

This is closely related to the (non-normative) definition of a [reified triple](https://www.w3.org/TR/rdf12-semantics/#Reif):

> The subject of a reification is intended to refer to a concrete realization of an RDF triple, such as a document in a surface syntax, rather than a triple considered as an abstract object. This supports use cases where properties such as dates of composition or provenance information are applied to the reified triple, which are meaningful only when thought of as referring to a particular instance or token of a triple.

Also [from RDF 1.2 Semantics](https://www.w3.org/TR/rdf12-semantics/#Reif):

> The reification only says that the triple token exists and what it is about, not that it is true, so it does not entail the triple.