Creating and Implementing an Ontology of Texts, Documents and Works in Complex Textual Traditions
| Main Author: | Peter Robinson |
|---|---|
| Format: | Article |
| Bahasa: | eng |
| Terbitan: |
, 2021
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| Subjects: | |
| Online Access: |
https://zenodo.org/record/4006582 |
Daftar Isi:
- This article suggests an ontology of texts, documents and works of particular relevance to the editing of complex large textual traditions, such as those of the Greek New Testament (c. 5000 witnesses), Dante's Commedia (c. 800) and Chaucer's Canterbury Tales (88). The need for this ontology is reviewed through a brief history of the Canterbury Tales project's work over three decades, with references also to the Greek New Testament and Commedia editorial projects. The central definition of the ontology is that a text is an act of communication inscribed in a document. Further, both the document and the act of communication may be represented as independent and ordered hierarchies of content objects (hence, trees), with textual nodes appearing on both trees, in different orderings and structures across the two trees. The Textual Communities environment successfully implements parts of the ontology of texts, documents and works to enable data collection, management and publication according to the needs of its current users, demonstrating the considerable advantages of this model for textual processing. However, Textual Communities does not implement the whole of this model in terms of data validation, ingestion and processing. Full exploration and implementation of the model here offered are challenges for future scholars. Successful implementation, however, would have considerable benefits, both for scholars working with complex large traditions, and also for those working with smaller but highly complex document sets, such as authorial manuscripts.