Re: [Crm-sig] EMAIL SUSPEITO: P72 has Language

[Franco Niccolucci]

Dear Maria, all

the problem comes from the fact that the CRM usually models what humans DO, not 
what they ARE. To model the latter, it is therefore necessary to introduce an 
event in which the person participates, as Thanasis suggested. What he proposes 
is correct, but considering a language instrumental to the activity of learning 
it sounds a bit awkward to my ear: common sense would consider so a handbook, 
an app, a teacher etc. 
Also, such activity may be problematic with native languages where an 
intentional action (= activity) is difficult to attribute to a few months old 
baby.

>From your description I believe that you are interested in documenting the 
>factual knowledge of a language, not that/how it was learnt, so I suggest the 
>following approach.

In this specific case you might use membership in an E74 Group, similar to what 
is suggested in the scope note of E74 for ‘nationality'. Thus you would have 
very large groupings of speakers of different languages, and speaking one of 
them would correspond to being member of that specific group, e.g. 
Maria P107 is member of E74 Group 'Portuguese speakers’. 
Incidentally, this option would also enable you (if you wish) to distinguish 
among the levels of knowledge of that language via P107.1 kind of member E55 
Type ’native speaker’. Thus, also the following would hold for you: Maria P107 
is member of E74 Group ‘English speakers’, but with P107.1 kind of member E55 
Type ’second language speaker’. Further flexibility can be introduced with this 
P107.1 if required, like “writer”, “translator”, etc. 

Best

Franco


Prof. Franco Niccolucci
Director, VAST-LAB
PIN - U. of Florence
Scientific Coordinator
ARIADNEplus - PARTHENOS

Editor-in-Chief
ACM Journal of Computing and Cultural Heritage (JOCCH) 

Piazza Ciardi 25
59100 Prato, Italy


> Il giorno 23 ago 2019, alle ore 16:17, Maria Jose de Almeida 
>  ha scritto:
> 
> 
> Dear all,
> 
> As some of you may know, I’m working in the Portuguese National Archives an 
> we are building a new data infrastructure using CIDOC-CRM for archival 
> description.
> When describing biographical information it’s common to state that some 
> person was fluent in some language, or languages, apart from his/her native 
> one. Using current archival descriptions standards [ISAD(G) 3.2.2; EAD 
> ] this is represented within a text, usually a very long text 
> string with information of distinct natures. So far we have been able to 
> decompose the different elements and represent them adequately as instances 
> of CIDOC-CRM classes and link them trough the suitable properties. But we are 
> struggling with this one...
> We cannot link a Person (E21) to a language (E56) and neither use multiple 
> instantiation, as it has been suggested in other cases 
> (http://www.cidoc-crm.org/Issue/ID-258-p72-quantification), because Person 
> (E21) and Linguistic Object (E33) are disjoint. 
> The only way around I can think of is to consider someone’s speech as a 
> linguistic object and state that that person participated in the creation of 
> that linguistic object.
> But it seams a rather odd solution as we would have to crate individuals for 
> someone’s speech in Portuguese, in French, in Russian, etc. and describe them 
> in a very broader manner. Because when it is stated that a person is fluent 
> in any of those languages, typically what is meant is that that person could 
> interact with other speakers of the same language, mainly trough an oral 
> discourse, or read written documents. Not exactly the same as creating 
> documents in a foreign language, situation which is much more straightforward 
> to represent.
> 
> Any thoughts that may help us?
> Thanks!
> 
> -- 
> Maria José de Almeida
> Técnica Superior
>  
> Direção de Serviços de Inovação e Administração Eletrónica
> Telefone (direto): 210 037 343
> Telefone (geral):  210 037 100
> m-jose.alme...@dglab.gov.pt
>  
> ___
> Crm-sig mailing list
> Crm-sig@ics.forth.gr
> http://lists.ics.forth.gr/mailman/listinfo/crm-sig

Re: [Crm-sig] EMAIL SUSPEITO: P72 has Language

[Athanasios Velios]

Dear Maria,

I think the complexity is from the fact that Language in the CRM is 
modelled as a Type, i.e. to be used for classifying things.


How about creating an E7 Activity to describe learning a language and 
then use P16 used specific object → E56 Language?


Or create a separate authority list of types of people: "greek speakers, 
english speakers, welsh speakers, etc"


Any other thoughts?

All the best,

Thanasis


On 23/08/2019 17:17, Maria Jose de Almeida wrote:

Dear all,


As some of you may know, I’m working in the Portuguese National Archives 
an we are building a new data infrastructure using CIDOC-CRM for 
archival description.


When describing biographical information it’s common to state that some 
person was fluent in some language, or languages, apart from his/her 
native one. Using current archival descriptions standards [ISAD(G) 
3.2.2; EAD ] this is represented within a text, usually a very 
long text string with information of distinct natures. So far we have 
been able to decompose the different elements and represent them 
adequately as instances of CIDOC-CRM classes and link them trough the 
suitable properties. But we are struggling with this one...


We cannot link a Person (E21) to a language (E56) and neither use 
multiple instantiation, as it has been suggested in other cases 
(http://www.cidoc-crm.org/Issue/ID-258-p72-quantification), because 
Person (E21) and Linguistic Object (E33) are disjoint.


The only way around I can think of is to consider someone’s speech as a 
linguistic object and state that that person participated in the 
creation of that linguistic object.


But it seams a rather odd solution as we would have to crate individuals 
for someone’s speech in Portuguese, in French, in Russian, etc. and 
describe them in a very broader manner. Because when it is stated that a 
person is fluent in any of those languages, typically what is meant is 
that that person could interact with other speakers of the same 
language, mainly trough an oral discourse, or read written documents. 
Not exactly the same as creating documents in a foreign language, 
situation which is much more straightforward to represent.



Any thoughts that may help us?

Thanks!

--
Maria José de Almeida
Técnica Superior
_Direção de Serviços de Inovação e Administração Eletrónica
_Telefone (direto): 210 037 343
_Telefone (geral):  210 037 100
_m-jose.alme...@dglab.gov.pt 

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