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I am defining mappings between two concepts schemes, and have the following situation:

wp20:in a skos:Concept ;
    skos:scopeNote "A preposition or subordinating conjunction"@en .

pos:conjunction a skos:Concept .
pos:preposition a skos:Concept .

What I want to do is describe the scope note as RDF metadata. For example, something like:

wp20:in skos:exactMatch [
    a owl:unionOf ;
    skos:broadMatch pos:conjunction ;
    skos:exactMatch pos:preposition
] .

The above does not work as the domain and range of skos:*Match are skos:Concept objects (so it is also not possible to use skos:Collection types either). Additionally, the SKOS Mapping vocabulary is deprecated and has not been completed (although some of the mapping properties have been moved into SKOS Core).

How do I describe this relationship using SKOS vocabulary?

reece
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2 Answers2

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First, note that the SKOS specification is freely available online. I'm not much of a SKOS user, but if I encounter a question about SKOS, that's where I look first. Some important notes that suggest that what you're looking for might not attainable in SKOS include:

3.5.1. SKOS Concepts, OWL Classes and OWL Properties

Other than the assertion that skos:Concept is an instance of owl:Class, this specification does not make any additional statement about the formal relationship between the class of SKOS concepts and the class of OWL classes. The decision not to make any such statement has been made to allow applications the freedom to explore different design patterns for working with SKOS in combination with OWL.

I point that out just to say that SKOS concepts aren't the same thing as OWL classes, so saying that an SKOS concept is an exact match for an OWL class might be a bit unusual.

If it is possible, it looks like it would be somewhere in §8. Semantic Relations, which specifies the kinds of relations that can exist among concepts. It appears that the relationships that you can have are:

  • skos:semanticRelation
  • skos:broader
  • skos:narrower
  • skos:related
  • skos:broaderTransitive
  • skos:narrowerTransitive

Based on that list, I think that perhaps the best you could do in pure SKOS would be something like:

wp20:in skos:narrower pos:conjunction ,
                      pos:preposition .

which doesn't, I think, exactly capture what you want, but might be close enough.

Joshua Taylor
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  • I am currently using `skos:relatedMatch` as `wp20:in` is not a preposition when used as a subordinating conjunction, and vice versa. I'm using the `Match` mapping relation in the example above as the concepts are in different concept schemes. It is either `wp20:in skos:broadMatch pos:conjunction` (broader because `wp20:in` is a subordinating conjunction in this instance, and `pos:conjunction` is a broader concept) or `wp20:in skos:exactMatch pos:preposition` depending on usage (but not both at the same time). – reece May 02 '16 at 14:14
  • @reece Note that owl:unionOf doesn't convey the "not at the same time", either. E.g., If a class C is the union of A and B, then anything that is an A or a B or both is a C. It seems like SKOS is a bit underpowered for the kind of classification you're trying to do; if you're willing to use OWL vocabulary, is there a reason to not use an OWL ontology rather than SKOS? – Joshua Taylor May 02 '16 at 16:04
  • SKOS best suits my usage as I am not describing specific concepts for use in RDF (i.e. I am not defining things to say "this RDF resource is a conjunction), I am describing named terms (e.g. "conj" is the notation for a "conjunction" in the part of speech vocabulary, and "j" (adjective) in the WP20 tagset is the same as "JJ" in the upenn (Penn Treebank) tagset). – reece May 02 '16 at 16:29
  • Re: owl:unionOf -- I was using that as an example. http://www.w3.org/2004/02/skos/mapping#OR would be better (e.g. `wp20:in skos:exactMatch [ a mapping:OR ; rdf:li pos:subordinatingConjunction ; rdf:li pos:preposition ] .`, but SKOS Mapping Vocabulary has been superseded by SKOS 2009 which defines mapping relations but does not include the AND, OR and NOT classes from the SKOS mapping vocabulary. – reece May 02 '16 at 16:42
  • hello @JoshuaTaylor how to coordination concept in skos? a skos:Concept . a skos:Concept, owl:ObjectProerty. a skos:Concept. and when and comes together it relates . maybe skos:exactMatch [:SELL :CAR]? – crapthings Jul 31 '20 at 09:03
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It seems from your comments that what you really want to state is the wp20:in is either a broader match of pos:conjunction or an exact match of pos:preposition. In that case, the representation can be:

wp20:in skos:broadMatch pos:conjunction ;
        skos:exactMatch pos:preposition .

This basically states that instances of wp20:in is "A preposition or subordinating conjunction", with the appropriate match relationship. That seems to fit your requirements.

scotthenninger
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