From English to RDF Triple - First Attempt

From English to RDF Triple - First Attempt

Note:

Below is a good first attempt but has a few inaccuracies that should probably be cleaned up.

1. Furnishing would not be an instance. It would be a class.
2. Since Furnishing is a class, we need to use a predicate that relates two classes. This would be subClassOf instead of is_a.
3. subclass relationships are represented a little differently. In OWL, its something like:

<owl:Class rdf:ID="Table"> 
  <rdfs:subClassOf rdf:resource="#Furnishing" />
</owl:Class>

(Is there an RDF representation? Feel free to add it to the wiki. Thanks.)

Sagredo's Journey

by Steven G. Harms

Herein I attempt to describe a conversation I had with Roger in which I tried to build up from a "I see things in the world" to RDF pathway. Inspired by Galilei, I will narrate it as a capable, but unlearned, layman (proximal to my actual state at time of writing)

Here at Conjunctured I see that there is a table. I would consider a table something one would buy at a furniture store and, therefore, that would make it a "furnishing."

Thus I would utter to a friend, a colleague, or a child:

A table is a furnishing

This is an English utterance.

Token	Part of speech	Syntax of character
Table	noun	Subject
is_a	verb	linking verb
furnishing	noun	predicate nominative

OK so now what? I'm going to create a vocabulary of nouns. In my (very) short list there is:

table
furnishing
chair
couch

Let me now assert a simple relationship

A table is a furnishing

Let's make it a bit closer to machine-friendly

A table is_a furnishing

Note: We have three elements, each of these correspond to a Class, Predicate, and Instance in RDF-ese.

Token	Part of speech	Syntax of character	RDF Name
Table	noun	Subject	Class
is_a	verb	linking verb	Property
furnishing	noun	predicate nominative	Instance

I realize something here, my unique insight about tables and that they are furnishings has likely been noted before. In fact, someone has (probably) already described this Class, Property, and Instance relationship.

Let's imagine a "furn" namespace which describes the objects and relationships in the realm of furniture:

<furn:table><rdf:Type>Furnishing</rdf:Type></furn:table>

Lo, I have expressed an RDF triple relationship.

An RDF utterance, such as the above, can be put into a store, a database, that can be queried using SPARQL (an SQL-like syntax). I can ask it, Booleanly, if furn:table is_a furn:furnishing. I can ask it for all instances of furnishings stored in the DB, etc.

Now the RDF language is pretty limited in terms of its expressiveness, so you might want to use RDFS. If you find that too limiting, then you might want the richness of OWL.