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Subject: Re: [geolang-comment] First proposals for ISO 639 and 3166 available



* Murray Altheim
| 
| Hmmm. Pardon me for butting in, but I'm curious as to how (apart
| from any perceived mistakes in naming the typing topics) the current
| approach is different from the one taken in the current language
| set? 

I am not sure what you mean. What "current language set", and what
"current approach"?

| I seem to remember arguing back in December of 2000 about this, but
| my assertion remains, i.e., that it's dangerous to tread into this
| territory any further than to simply reify the available 639
| language codes and let interpretation and use of them be up to the
| user and their specific application, the same approach as ISO has
| chosen in this regard. It seems foolhardy to attempt more.
 
I think we all agree on this.

| I don't believe topic maps are by their nature any more
| "ontological" than any other representation of knowledge. 

Well, I was referring to PDF and CSV files, which are what ISO 639 is
expressed in. I assume you would agree topic maps are more ontological
than those? :-)

| The ISO 639 set of codes representing the names of languages is
| similarly "ontological," and the meanings of those codes surely
| should not change merely because of their transformation into [XTM]
| Topics. 

No, that would take away the whole meaning of what we are trying to
do. However, when looking at ISO 639 it is not always perfectly clear
what it is trying to say. The type assignments, in particular, are not
explicitly present in the text, whereas we have to either make them
or not make them.

| Any additional meaning would be beyond the scope of this TC and
| require a team of linguistic experts, who would likely never agree
| to more than a simple representation of language names, never on
| language groupings. 

Agreed. Either we include the types because the standard says they
should be assigned in a particular way, or we leave them out, because
the standard does not say anything about them.

| It's been shown recently that the concept of "race" is fallacious,
| and the idea that there are distinct boundaries between languages
| (and not a continuum, a continual intermixing and evolution) is
| similarly fallacious, [...]

Certainly. Personally, I think that this applies to all subjecs, and
the idea that subjects are Platonic and pre-existing independent of
what we say about them is simply false. I think Bernard would agree
with that.

| Why attempt to tread upon a territory that is *known* to be full of
| land mines? I keep hearing this same discussion brought up again and
| again.

What's your point, Murray? What is it you want to do with the
published subject sets? Maybe I'm just being thick-headed, but I don't
understand what you want us to do.

-- 
Lars Marius Garshol, Ontopian         <URL: http://www.ontopia.net >
ISO SC34/WG3, OASIS GeoLang TC        <URL: http://www.garshol.priv.no >



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