On Thu, Mar 09, 2006 at 12:15:22PM +0000, Pete Johnston wrote:
> Hmmm.... I think rather than defining those terms as "nouns", maybe we
> should find ways of rephrasing the text so that those terms are used
> _only_ to indicate relationships. The notion of a property "being" a
> subproperty doesn't really make sense (to me!); rather a property may be
> the subject of subproperty relationships with other properties. When we
> say, "X is a subproperty" we are using a rather loose shorthand for "X
> is a subproperty of (some-other-property)".
>
> And an external agent may make a subproperty assertion about my property
> without my ever knowing about it: does that mean for them my property is
> a different type of thing? I don't think so. It's still just a property,
> but they have provided some additional information about a relationship
> with another property (which enables them to infer some additional
> information).
Yes, I would vote NOT to use it as a noun. I didn't recognize
this as an issue until I saw a reference to "a subproperty"
is a recent DC-Collections posting. Using it as a noun in
the DCAM suggests that DCMI is strongly re-affirming the
notion of an Element Refinement as a "type of term".
Tom
--
Dr. Thomas Baker [log in to unmask]
Director, Specifications and Documentation
Dublin Core Metadata Initiative
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