[tcs-lc] Names as Objects

[Kennedy, Jessie]

>
>The downsides I see have to do with structural elegance -- 
>specifically,
>mixing what I see as apples and oranges (relationships between 
>names, vs.
>relationships between concepts) in one place as though them 
>meant more or
>less the same thing.  Clearly, the designers of TCS as it 
>currently exists
>appreciate the value of structurally separating "similar" 
>sorts of data into
>different structures, as indicated by the separation of "Relationships"
>(within TaxonConcepts) from "RelationshipAssrtions".  Both 
>structures do the
>same thing (establish relationships between a pair of concepts in the
>context of an "AccordingTo") -- but they exist in different 
>parts of of the
>schema because there is a structural elegance in unambiguously 
>separating
>those relationships that form part of the *definition* of a 
>concept, from
>those elements that represent secondary *interpretations* of concept
>relationships.

the designers of TCS separated out the relationships and relationship assertions because we tried to separate out the definition of concepts which should be used (certainly primarily if not exclusively) for matching to labels used in identifications and therefore for relating concepts, from  general assertions by someone about (mostly always) someone else's concept - which doesn't affect the original definition. The reason names have been treated as concepts is because they become concepts because people are encouraged to use "correct" names so they inherit a meaning therefore we want them to be concepts even if in the original publication of that name there is no concept described as such there will be reference to the original concept (in your terms the original name embedded in the original concept) that this is a correction for. You could consider this similar to someone describing a new concept and saying that it includes or is congruent to some other concept (i.e. has some relationships to) without giving any more details. 
The Relationships within a Taxonomic concept have one target, that pointed to from the current taxonomic concept being defined, and it is implied that these relationships were by the person in the AcccordingTo and in the Publication where the concept was defined. The RelationshipAssertions allows us to relate 2 concepts both of which have to be specified by a different Author in a different publication. (can also be used to make a statement about 1 concept) We are in discussion as to whether or not relationship assertions actually deals with all cases some of the users need to represent or they need to be more complex.
>
>> Rich proposes that there could be a brief summary of a name in the
>> TaxonConcept element as well as a pointer the to full 
>scientific name.
>
>...as currently exists with "NameSimple" and "NameDetailed".  
>The only other
>element to consider is "NameVerbatim", which is neccesary if 
>you are going
>to decouple "literal string of characters as appears in the concept
>definition" from "name".  I get the sense from Jessie's recent 
>posts that
>TCS assumes that "unique string of characters" *defines* "new 
>name". 

only if that unique string of characters was published in a taxonomic publication such as a monograph or as a result of a name change to satisfy one of the codes and therefore to be intended to be used by people in the future - not just any name string - I thought I made that quite clear.....
 
> If
>that's true, and if the TCS schema is designed around that 
>premise, then it
>is of limited use to nomenclators, and thus encourages the 
>nomenclators to
>abandon TCS as a mechanism for exchanging name (sensu nomenclaturalist)
>data.  I can't imagine a scenario where anyone benefits from such a
>separation.
>

so does this still mean it is unsuitable for nomeclaturalists? 

Funny I don't think of you as a nomenclaturalist, Rich, but it's your view on what nomenclaturalists need that we're getting rather than their view - would seem that email isn't getting the responses we hoped for.....

>
>There is also the regret of adopting a "system of convenience" 
>in a world
>that preceeded universal taxon name registration, which the post
>taxon-name-registration world got stuck with as a legacy 
>mechanism of data
>exchange.

can't see how the TCS approach would affect any future taxon-name-registration efforts - it might even encourage it!

Jessie
 
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