SBVR16 — the scope/namespace of a placeholder

In SBVR clause 8.4.4, there is a necessity in the entry for ‘placeholder’: “Each placeholder is in exactly one verb concept wording”. Now, immediately before section 8.4.4, in the entry for ‘statement expresses proposition’, there is a synonymous form: ‘proposition has statement’. So, ‘statement’ is the text of two placeholders. A.4.12 (Synonymous forms) tries to say that these two different placeholders refer to the same verb concept role, but the statement is garbled: “The ones using the same designation as placeholders of the primary form represent the corresponding verb concept roles…” The ‘designation used by a placeholder’ is the representation of the range concept by a signifier for that concept, per 8.4.4 ‘placeholder uses designation’. What is intended here is: “A placeholder that has the same expression as a placeholder of the primary verb concept wording represents the same verb concept role.”

Further, in that same example entry, there is a Definition: “the statement represents the proposition”. According to A.4.2.3, the expression ‘statement’ refers to a placeholder in the verb concept wording, but that is ambiguous, since there are two verb concept wordings. That text should say the primary verb concept wording, so as to disambiguate the reference.

Again, in A.4.12, the following sentence appears: “The order of placeholders for verb concept roles can be different.” What does that mean? By the necessity above, the placeholders are different, so they cannot be reordered. The intent is that the relative positions of the placeholders for the same verb concept role may be different.

Finally, all of this is an elaborate convention to maintain the given Necessity. It seems that it would be much easier to make the placeholder a representation of the verb concept role throughout the terminological entry, as distinct from having it denote the verb concept role in the primary entry and in the Definition(s), but not in Synonymous forms, Descriptions, Notes, etc. The only function of that Necessity is to make a single ternary fact type: “Verb concept wording has placeholder at starting character position” into two binary fact types that each convey half the concept. A great deal of effort is expended to explain use of a business-friendly syntax that violates the stated model of a purely syntactic concept – the intent is that the placeholder expression represents the same verb concept role throughout the entry. And verb concept wordings are ONLY about expressions. The underlying problem is that the concept ‘terminological entry’ is not part of the clause 8 vocabulary, and is therefore not available to be the scope of a placeholder. But then, the concept ‘primary verb concept wording’ is not in the clause 8 vocabulary, either.