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Basic Lexical Label Semantics

Can a resource have two "preferred lexical labels"? Can a lexical label be both "preferred" and "alternative" for the same resource? If a lexical label is "hidden", can it also be "preferred" or "alternative" for the same resource?

This page provides explanation, discussion and background material for the issue "BasicLexicalLabelSemantics".

Imagine the SKOS vocabulary consisted only of skos:prefLabel, skos:altLabel and skos:hiddenLabel. I.e. forget everything else for the moment.

Now, consider the following RDF graph:

@prefix ex: <http://www.example.com/examples#>.
@prefix skos: <http://www.w3.org/2004/02/skos/core#>.

ex:foo skos:prefLabel "foo"@en.
ex:foo skos:prefLabel "bar"@en.

The resource ex:foo has two different preferred lexical labels in the same language. Is this graph inconsistent?

What about the following:

@prefix ex: <http://www.example.com/examples#>.
@prefix skos: <http://www.w3.org/2004/02/skos/core#>.

ex:foo skos:prefLabel "foo"@en.
ex:foo skos:altLabel "foo"@en.

The label "foo"@en is given as both a preferred and an alternative lexical label for the resource ex:foo. Is this graph inconsistent?

Consider another graph:

@prefix ex: <http://www.example.com/examples#>.
@prefix skos: <http://www.w3.org/2004/02/skos/core#>.

ex:foo skos:prefLabel "foo"@en.
ex:foo skos:hiddenLabel "foo"@en.

The label "foo"@en is given as both a preferred and a hidden lexical label for the resource ex:foo. Is this graph inconsistent?

Finally, consider:

@prefix ex: <http://www.example.com/examples#>.
@prefix skos: <http://www.w3.org/2004/02/skos/core#>.

ex:foo skos:altLabel "foo"@en.
ex:foo skos:hiddenLabel "foo"@en.

The label "foo"@en is given as both an alternative and a hidden lexical label for the resource ex:foo. Is this graph inconsistent?


Background: