Re: Mistake in the default serialisation of the RDF ontology

Hi Matthieu,

To slightly paraphrase the section you linked to:

    “A triple of the form <s> rdf:predicate <o> states that <o> is an instance of rdf:Property.”

    “The rdfs:range of rdf:predicate is rdfs:Resource.”

And the Turtle serialisation of the namespace document matches the second statement.

I agree with you that given the first statement, one would expect the second statement to say that the range is rdf:Property.

But arguably it is the first statement that is problematic, while the second statement (and the RDF document) is fine.

This is because a reified statement is not an asserted statement, and therefore, a graph containing only a reified version of a statement should not imply anything that can be inferred from the asserted version of the statement.

The problematic wording was already present in the 2004 version of the spec, and the 2014 version copied it over without change. As far as I remember, the consensus in 2014 was that the reification vocabulary was generally a bad idea, and there was little desire to fix or improve anything about it. I think this consensus still holds today.

Richard


> On 16 Dec 2021, at 23:04, Matthieu Bosquet <matthieu@cognithive.com> wrote:
> 
> I'm reaching out because I think you might be able to help or point me in the right direction to fix what I think is a mistake in the default serialisation of the RDF ontology dereferenceable at http://w3.org/1999/02/22-rdf-syntax-ns# <https://t.co/2fWsLy0dpC>.
> 
> According to RDF Schema 1.1, I think the rdfs:range of rdf:predicate should be rdf:Property as per https://w3.org/TR/rdf-schema/#ch_predicate <https://t.co/hN2YnAwnhv>.
> 
> The current range is rdfs:Resource in the default serialization at http://w3.org/1999/02/22-rdf-syntax-ns# <https://t.co/2fWsLy0dpC>.
> 
> I know it's non-normative, but it seems like something that could be nice to fix.
> 
> Kind regards,
> Matthieu