The example of "adopting authority adopts element of guidance from owning authority citing reference" has the phrase "Example: EU-Rent has adopted an behavioral business rule from from an industry glossary" with a repetition of the word "from".

The word "smakrt" appears in the sentence:
"Unicode encodings contain all of the characters used in all of the natural languages, including readability characters such as smakrt quotes."

I presume the intent was "smart"?

Page 64 gives the Necessity "No verb concept role designation is a term.".

In SBVR verb concepts role are noun concepts, even though they are not general noun concepts. SBVR is deficient in that it doesn’t show terms as being for both general noun concepts and verb concept roles.

Also ISO 1087-1 does not exclude concepts that SBVR considers to be verb concept roles from its concept ‘concept’ and therefore from being designated by ‘terms’.

According to the diagram on p. 26 (Figure 8.5), element of guidance and rule are not mutually exclusive. But Figure 16.1 shows they are. That's an error. A proposition can be both a rule and an element of guidance.

The definition of "vocabulary" in SBVR is "set of designations and verb concept wordings primarily drawn from a single language
to express concepts within a body of shared meanings".

The definition does not explicitly indicate that definitions of concepts are part of a vocabulary. Most business people would probably assume they are.

This core SBVR concept needs an example.

Example: Eu-Rent has cars that people rent. The verb concept “rents” includes placeholders for two verb concept roles, one for the person renting and one for the car rented. Two verb concept role designations are specified for these verb concept roles: “renter” and “rented car”, respectively.

This entry needs an example.

I suggest the following ...

Example: The situational role 'negotiator' is the part a person plays, or function a person assumes, in the situation 'resolution of contractual disputes'.

Issue:
In the current definition of verb concept role designation, the phrase “is recognizable in use in the context of another role of the same verb concept” is obscure. As currently worded, the definition also precludes designations for unary verb concept roles. In addition, the definition fails to express the inherent and necessary linkage in meaning between a verb concept role designation and the verb concept itself. Finally, figure 11.2 is misleading because it omits “noun concept” as being the more general concept of “role”.

Resolution:
1. Change the definition of ‘verb concept role designation’ to:
designation that is of a verb concept role and that has an expression whose representation of the verb concept role is meaningful only in the context of the verb concept that has the verb concept role
2. Add “noun concept” as being the more general concept of “role” in figure 11.
3. Add these examples before the existing example for the entry:
Example: In the verb concept "party rents property", “renter” might be the verb concept role designation for party, and “rented property” might be the verb concept role designation for property.
Example: In the unary verb concept "shipment is late", “late shipment” might be the verb concept role designation for shipment.

Problems:

1. By my count, the verb "classifies" appears 8 times in SBVR in stylized font, indicating there should be a defined verb concept for it. However, I do not find one.

2. These 8 instances do not appear to me to necessarily conform to a single meaning. They should be reviewed if kept in stylized font.

3. Issue 15-28 (was 19631) "Definition of 'categorization scheme contains category'" addressed a minor wording improvement for this verb concept. It has been noted that "divides" in that definition should probably be replaced by "classifies". However, that point was deferred to this new issue.

Discussion:

In SBVR, “classification” is a relationship between two concepts. That meaning is generally not what 'classification' means in natural language. Any formal definition of "classifies" should align itself with the existing meaning of "classification". Doing so, however, is likely to result in further misinterpretations.

Recommendations:

1. Remove the styling from the 8 existing uses of 'classifies'.

2. Change "divides" in the definition of "categorization scheme contains category" to "classifies" (unstyled).

On physical page p. 45 of Version 1.4 of SBVR, the Necessity listed under the entry for Implied Characteristic includes ”logical implication” as a defined (styled) term. However, there is no definition entry for “logical implication” in SBVR 1.4.

Logical implications underlie a very important form of (business) rules. A standard covering rules from the business perspective is incomplete without appropriate treatment. Such treatment must fully explain what “logical implication” means ­ and does not mean ­ selectively for both behavioral and definitional rules. SBVR needs to address the fundamental semantics of rules based on implications.

SBVR clause 21.3 (Logical formulations) says:

"Each meaning formulated by a closed logical formulation is a proposition".

This statement is false. If we assume the existence of a verb concept 'person is in location', then in a statement like: "John is in London on Tuesdays", the logical formulation of "John is in London" is closed – it contains no variables. But this usage is not intended to formulate a proposition. No assertion is made that "John is in London" is true or false, or that anyone cares. The 'meaning' that this closed logical formulation formulates is a concept – a category of 'state of affairs', whose instances are states in which John is in London.

By comparison, assuming that we also have 'state of affairs occurs on time interval', the whole sentence also has a closed logical formulation: For each Tuesday t, there is an instance of the concept "John is in London" that occurs on t. And that formulation IS intended to formulate a proposition.

When a closed logical formulation is used to represent a proposition, the interpretation as a proposition produces either 'true' or 'false', and the interpretation of the same closed logical formulation as a category of state of affairs produces a concept that corresponds to at most 1 actuality. So the SBVR statement that a true proposition corresponds to an actuality is consistent with both interpretations, and the idea that a false proposition does not correspond to an actuality is also consistent.

Now, SBVR asserts that a false proposition corresponds to a state of affairs that is not an actuality. But the closed logical formulation of a false proposition when it is interpreted as a category of state of affairs is simply a concept that does not correspond to any actuality. There is no need for it to correspond to some fictitious event or situation.

For "XYZCo needs to have an office in Miami", i.e., "XYZCo needs that XYZCo has an office in Miami", "XYZCo has an office in Miami" has a closed logical formulation that is not intended to represent a proposition, but rather a category of states of affairs. XYZCo does not need a fictitious instance of that category, it needs the category to correspond to an actuality. It is the nature of verbs like "needs" and "wants" to refer to a category with that intent. And it is no different from "XYZCo needs an XYZCo office in Miami" – "XYZCo office in Miami" refers to a concept with the intent that it should have at least one instance. There is no existing or fictitious 'XYZCo office in Miami' that XYZCo needs.

Similarly, if "Mary prevents Jimmy from playing with matches", what Mary prevents is "a 'playing with matches' by Jimmy", or equivalently, the situation 'Jimmy plays with matches'. The latter form is a closed logical formulation that is not intended to represent a proposition. It represents the same category of state of affairs that "a 'playing with matches' by Jimmy" does. Mary does not prevent one fictitious instance of that concept, but rather that the concept has any instances at all. It is the nature of "prevents" to refer to a category of states of affairs with that intent. In a similar way, one can "prevent forest fires". There is no need for the concept "forest fire" to have a fictitious instance that is prevented.

Technically, these latter usages mean is that the verb concept wording for "needs" should be:

thing1 needs thing2*

where the asterisk indicates an "intensional role" as described in SBVR A.2.6. And similarly for "prevents", "wants", etc. Similarly, the concept of occurrence should be worded:

state of affairs* occurs on time interval

The use of the intensional role makes it clear that when the thing2 or state of affairs role is played by a closed logical formulation, the intended interpretation is a concept, not a proposition.

Understanding this dual role of closed logical formulations (and the corresponding English and Structured English formulations) is critical to resolving a number of conflicts about states of affairs between SBVR and other OMG business specifications. It allows us to distinguish 'category of state of affairs' from 'state of affairs' in usages, and to recognize that 'state of affairs' and 'actuality' have exactly the same instances.

Specification: SBVR v1.3

Summary:

Experience with DTV teaches that the SBVR markup practices are very expensive in editor time, and do not improve readability of definitions and necessities in OMG specifications. The marked up text can only usefully be output from an authoring tool; the author should be able to input plain text for definitions and necessities. And, in the case of complex definitions, the markup reduces the readability of the text.

The function of the markup as output from a tool is twofold:

• to allow the business analyst to identify vocabulary entries in text

• to allow the business analyst to verify that a text consists only of keywords and vocabulary entries

In the absence of a tool that can recognize vocabulary and keywords in plain text and generate the marked up form, it should not be the practice of OMG specifications to use the markup. Further, even when it is possible, the use of the markup in definitions and necessities reduces readability, partly as a consequence of oversize sans-serif font, which is known to disrupt the visual flow of text to readers. In short, SBVR itself “leads by bad example” in this area.

SBVR should be clear that its use of markup is what one might expect a tool to be able to do, but not what one would expect an author to provide. And it should be made clear that the use of SBVR has nothing to do with using the markup, while the vocabulary headings are important. (The best example would have been not to use it in the SBVR spec.)

In SBVR v1.3, clause 8.7, Figure 8.12, 'expression denotes thing' represents the bottom edge of the semiotic triangle, but unlike 'represents' and 'corresponds to', which represent the other two edges of the semiotic triangle, 'expression denotes thing' is not an SBVR verb concept. Instead, we have 'term denotes thing', 'name references thing', 'statement denotes state of affairs'. But none of 'term', 'name', and 'statement' is (said to be) an expression. So, none of the SBVR concepts actually represents the 'denotes' concept in the semiotic triangle. And apparently an SBVR verb symbol cannot denote anything!

This is completely inconsistent with established linguistic and semiotic practice, and it is inconsistent with ISO 1087. Yes, SBVR distinguishes expressions by their roles – term, name, verb symbol, definition, statement – but they all denote things. The idea of the diagram 8.12 is that each role of expression constrains the things that it can denote, but that model is incomplete. Verb symbols and definitions are also roles of expressions in representing concepts and can thus denote the things to which the concept corresponds. Further the use of 'references' instead of 'denotes' for 'name denotes thing' is a pointless inconsistency, which reduces the clarity of the specification.

Note also that the term 'denotes' (without markup) is incorrectly used in the definition of 'designation'. 'denotes' is correctly used in the definition of 'placeholder', but that use assumes the missing generic concept 'expression denotes thing', because a role expression can be anything from a simple term/name to a quantified definitional expression. That is, SBVR uses the common understanding of the term 'denotes' but the SBVR concept system does not contain that concept.

[This is a replacement for Issue 19715, which is confused.]

Specification SBVR v1.3

Summary:

The distinction between text that is not intended to be completely marked up as well-defined SBVR SE and text that is intended to be natural English should be somehow noted in the paragraph tag or some text annotation, and similarly distinguished in the XML file. Otherwise the recipient tool cannot determine whether the ‘text’ object is intended to be interpretable. SBVR Structured English is not English; it is a formal language that one might expect a receiving tool to parse and interpret, while that cannot be expected for arbitrary business English. SBVR SE is not unique in this regard. It is important to tools that define their own restricted natural languages to be able to label definitions and necessities as having that particular form, so that they can know to parse it. The text markup tricks that distinguish the languages in the SBVR specification do not transfer into the XML file. Some means of identifying a 'controlled' natural language for a given definition or necessity should be provided in the XML, and possibly in the terminological entry presentation.

The examples in clause 27.3 describe patterns for definitions in XML that are based on the non-normative markup conventions used in SBVR. Those distinctions are not specified as SBVR concepts and are not necessarily supported by conforming tools. So the text is unclear about the normative requirement. There is only one pattern for definitions. The intent is that, regardless of the form of the definition, if the tool knows the more general concept, it should provide the ‘specializes’ fact, and may provide an LRMV representation.

Specification SBVR v1.3

Clause 23.7

In the second paragraph of clause 23.7, we find:

" The XML patterns provide a normative definition of which SBVR concepts are represented by each use of SBVR Structured English in the vocabulary descriptions and entries contained in Clauses 7 through 21. The general principles used for the patterns are these: First, the facts of what is presented using SBVR Structured English are represented using XML."

This suggests that the normative requirements for XML representation are based on the use of the non-normative SBVR SE. That is obviously wrong, and could not be the intent, but unfortunately this misconception carries through into the 'example' patterns.

In particular, noun concepts have multiple forms of Definition, but the distinctions are based on use of SBVR SE markup. There should be only one XML form.

Also, if the patterns are normative, as the cited paragraph says, then the inclusion of the LRMV representation of a noun concept as a projection is apparently required. If the following XML elements are optional, the text does not say so:

<sbvr:closedProjectionFormalizesDefinition closedProjection="def-formal-projection" definition="def-formal"/> <sbvr:closedProjectionDefinesNounConcept closedProjection="def-formal-projection" nounConcept="meaning"/>

Similarly, the unary verb pattern contains the XML element:

<sbvr:placeholderUsesDesignation placeholder="eis-p" designation="example"/>

Presumably this element is optional, and not meaningful if the placeholder does not 'use' some other designation. Is there some normative significance to the appearance of a term within a placeholder expression? Is a placeholder expression required to contain some other term? (There is a convention in clause 12, but no normative statement about this convention.)

And the verb definition pattern contains:

<sbvr:closedProjectionFormalizesDefinition closedProjection="efe-projection" definition="efe-def-formal"/> <sbvr:closedProjectionDefinesverbConcept closedProjection="efe-projection" verbConcept="meaning"/>

<sbvr:variableMapsToVerbConceptRole variable="efe-var1" verbConceptRole="efe-r1"/>

<sbvr:variableMapsToVerbConceptRole variable="efe-var2" verbConceptRole="efe-r2"/>

Are these parts of a verb Definition required?

The patterns for Necessities and Possibilities similarly apparently require logicalFormulation elements, but they should be optional.

The whole problem here is that the text provides examples that are examples, not the normative patterns that the cited paragraph says they are. The text has to clarify what parts of the patterns are required (under what circumstances), and what parts are optional.

Note also that the pattern for the synonymous form seems to be missing a sbvr:verbConceptRoleDesignation element for the first placeholder.

Finally, Clause 23 provides no pattern for verb concept wordings that involve more than two roles. So they have no defined XML representation at all, and one cannot expect successful exchange of such verb concepts.

Specification: SBVR v1.3

Title: 'partitive verb concept' is ill-defined

Summary:

Clause 14.1.2 defines ‘partitive verb concept’ as “verb concept where each instance is an actuality that a given part is in the composition of a given whole.” The examples include ‘car model is in car group’, which is a logical grouping, and ‘barrel is included in mechanical pencil’, which is a physical composition. In several upper ontologies, these concepts – logical grouping and physical composition – are significantly different; that is, the group-member relationship is not considered to be a whole-part relationship. And UML distinguishes them as “aggregation” and “composition”.

The following all involve some business concept of “part of”:

A line item is part of a budget.

A disc is part of a brake assembly.

A triangle has 3 sides and 3 internal angles.

Answering the phone is part of the receptionist’s duties.

John was a part of the team that designed Curiosity.

John is a member of the Republican Party.

The Tea Party is an outspoken segment of the Republican Party.

What is it that they all have in common? What rule applies to all of them?

If the reader understands what the relationship is, saying that it is partitive conveys nothing s/he does not know. If the reader does not clearly understand the verb concept, what can s/he conclude from the statement that it is 'partitive'? Is it subjective?

Edward J. Barkmeyer

Thematix Partners

Email: ebarkmeyer@thematix.com

Phone: +1 240-672-5800

"Behavioral rule" is not infrequently used in discussion and writing. For example, in SBVR itself it appears in the the first line of the Note at the top of p.119. It also appears 4 times in headings and figure titles.

However, SBVR doesn't currently recognize the term. There is (and can be) no such thing as a behavioral rule that is not a business rule. SBVR should indicate explicitly that "behavioral rule" is simply a synonym for "behavioral business rule".

In some situations, a community is governed by a rulebook owned by another community. This frequently occurs in contracts. For example:

• EU-Rent’s renters are governed by its rental contract. Like most contracts for services, it contains terms and conditions (respectively, the explicitly-defined vocabulary of the contract and the rules of the contract). The rental contract governs the ‘renter’ and ‘additional driver’ roles of its customers, but is owned by (is under the business jurisdiction of) EU-Rent. The rental contract is the rulebook for rental customers.

• Almost all over-the-counter (OTC) derivatives trading is conducted under the ISDA Master Agreement, which governs the counterparties in a trade but is owned by The International Swaps and Derivatives Association.

There are often rules for the owning and governed communities that are related. For example:

• EU-Rent has a rule in its rental contract (i.e. for renters): “The rented car of an open rental must not be outside the area authorized for the rental”. This would probably be stated in the contract as “You must not take your rented car outside the area authorized in your rental contract. If you do, your contract will be canceled.” or something similar. The second sentence is not a rule with which the renter must comply. It's a warning of the consequence of not complying with the rule. (Note: an open rental is a rental in which the renter has possession of the rented car).

• There is a related rule for EU-Rent staff: “If the rented car of an open rental is outside the area authorized for the rental then the rental contract must be canceled”. EU-Rent staff are not governed by the rule for renters (unless they have rented a car from the company).

The noun concept "governed community" and the verb concept "rulebook is for governed community" should be added to SBVR

Specification: SBVR

Version: 1.3 (from RTF Report)

Title: What is a 'terminological entry'

Summary:

SBVR clause 6.2 (How to read this specification) says:

"This specification describes a vocabulary, or actually a set of vocabularies, using terminological entries. Each entry

includes a definition, along with other specifications such as notes and examples."

But the term 'terminological entry' is not defined anywhere in the text of SBVR. In particular, it does not appear in Clause 19.3 in relationship to 'terminological dictionary'.

Clause 19.3 says a 'terminological dictionary' is a collection of representations, that it "includes representations" and "presents a vocabulary". But then a vocabulary is a "set of designations", and is apparently related to them by 'thing is in set', because there is no other stated verb concept to relate them. So the vocabulary is a subset of the "set of representations" that is included in a terminological dictionary that presents it? But a 'terminological entry' seems to be none of the above, and a 'terminological dictionary' does not include them? This set of circumlocutions completely fails to present a clear model for the exchange of a vocabulary or of a terminological dictionary. The central idea in a terminological entry, if SBVR is any indication, is a concept, and representations of it, and related commentary.

Annex A.4.5 says: "The 'General Concept' caption can be used to indicate a concept that generalizes the entry concept."

In point of fact, the General Concept caption represents three entirely different verb concepts in different contexts:

• In the entry for a general noun concept or verb concept X, General Concept: Y means 'X specializes Y'.

• In the entry for an individual noun concept X, General Concept: Y means 'X is an instance of Y'.

• In the entry for a "role concept" X, Genera Concept: Y means 'X ranges over Y' (see also Issue 19519).

Further, it is possible for a role concept to specialize another role concept, as 'first member' (of a list) specializes 'member' (of a list). But the range of 'first member' is whatever the list is a list of. Similarly, 'captain (of ship)' specializes 'officer (of ship)' but both range over 'person'. So, overloading General Concept in the way SBVR does makes it less capable of conveying the semantics of roles.

[Note that UML and MOF distinguish between the range of an association end (role) -- the class (general concept) to which it is connected -- and any association end (role) that it subsets/redefines (specializes). SBVR apparently cannot.]

Specification: SBVR

Version: 1.3 (from RTF Report)

Title: Annex A is a mistitled grab bag

Annex A is titled "SBVR Structured English", and every paragraph of A.1 is about that topic, except for the last, which indicates that every subsection after A.2 is about other topics. In particular, A.3 and A.4 are about the structure of the SBVR specification as a terminological dictionary, and A.5 and A.6 are guidance for creating 'rule set' structures.

It is imperative that A.3 and A.4 be packaged as a section, either in section 6.2 (How to read this specification), or in an Annex that 6.2 points to. Those two sections are "how to read the SBVR specification" and interpret the terminological entries in it. This issue arose from trying to find that guidance.

Guidance for creating rule sets (A.5 and A.6) is not a characterization of either SBVR SE or the structure of the SBVR specification. It is a separate topic, associated with clauses 16 thru 18.

The following SBVR metamodel formal logic-based errors and omissions need to be dealt with as we ran out of time to deal with them:

a. A reference scheme is needed for individual concept.

b. The entries in Clause 8.5 “Conceptual Schemas and Models” need to be corrected to agree with the first paragraphs of Clause 10.

c. In Clause 8.6 “Extensions” and other sections of Clauses 8-12 the definition of “corresponds to” in “meaning corresponds to thing” and all the relationship and necessities between all the subcategories of meaning and all the subcategories of thing, especially the meaning of “proposition corresponds to state of affairs” and “ individual concept corresponds to thing” need to be clarified or added. How the relationship between concept and thing is different between the “use” and the “mention” of the concept needs to be made clear.

d. Thee reference scheme for individual concept needs to be fixed to include the “mention” of object types, roles, fact types, propositions and subcategories of them.

e. Definitions that cover all the uses of “individual” in Clauses 8-12 need to be added.

f. The meaning of Henkin semantics needs to be specified as it applies to the SBVR metamodel.

The ‘involvement’ Issue is as follows (from my email sent on Saturday):

Issue Submitter’s Name: Donald Chapin

Issue Submitter’s Company: Business Semantics Ltd (submitted as SBVR FTF Chair)

Issue Submitter’s Email: Donald.Chapin@btinternet.com

Issue Name: The Notion of “Involvement” has not been Adequately Specified with in SBVR

Document No: dtc/06/03/01

Document Revision Date: March 2006

Document Version No: —

Chapter/Section: 8.1.1

Page No(s): 16

Nature of Issue: Revision

Severity of Issue: Major

Issue Description:

The notion of Involvement has not totally been taken into account by the resolution of Issue 9948 as stated in that resolution.

Several clarifications are needed regarding Involvement such as the nature of instance of roles (see the sum example in the initial 9948 statement).

As a result of the vote on Issue 9959, there is a need to clarify and strengthen the Note in front of the Formal Logic Interpretation Table in Clause 10.2, particularly to cover these points:

• a major subset of SBVR has a complete formal logic interpretation whose principles are set forth in Clause 10.1

• the table will contain:

o a formal logic interpretation specified in ISO Common Logic based on Clause 10.1

o a cross-reference to OWL constructs that equivalent to SBVR constructs

• the current table is incomplete and immature, and will be completed during the SBVR Revision Task Force

Issue Description:

1. Spin-off Issue for items not resolved In Issue 9959 because of lack of time:

a. Adding terms and definitions used in Clause 10.1.1 to Clause 10.1.2 and remove terms in Clause 10.1.2 no longer needed

b. Remove tutorial material from Clause 10.1.1

c. Add ISO 24707 terms to 10.1.2 if permission is received from ISO

SBVR Clause A.2.6 provides syntax for a concept called ‘intensional role’, but there is no such terminological entry and no clear definition.

In one of the business usage examples for DTV, we have encountered a usage of ‘time period’ in two intensional roles: ‘fixed period’ and ‘variable period’, but we can’t declare them: Concept type: intensional role.

As A.2.6 says, intensional roles arise when a concept designation is used with verbs of specification and change, and possibly others. The reference is to an unspecified thing of that will satisfy the concept. When one ‘specifies the rental period for X’, the rental period does not denote any time period. The whole idea is that one associates the concept ‘rental period for X’ with an extension that will only exist when the specifying action completes. Similarly, one cannot ‘change the rental period’, one can only change which time period “the rental period for X” denotes. With these verbs, the “intensional role” is equivalent to an ‘answer’ (at least in structure): one specifies “what time period the rental period is”.

The same idea seems to apply to a verb like ‘prevents’. If someone “prevents a forest fire”, there is no forest fire that is prevented; rather the concept ‘forest fire’ is not instantiated. But unlike the above, one does not prevent “what forest fire it is.” And if one ‘orders 1000 widgets’, they may or may not already exist so that they can be ordered. What one orders is a characterization of objects that are to be instantiated.

So, the intensional role seems to be a valuable concept for verb concept wordings, because it has real business use

Problem: If "body of shared concepts" were defined as [the set of] all of the concepts within a body of shared meanings", then I dont think the following entry would be needed: "body of shared concepts includes concept".

Resolution:

1. Change the definition of "body of shared concepts" to: the set of all of the concepts within a body of shared meanings"

2. Eliminate the entry: body of shared concepts includes concept

SBVR is not clear about how markup should or should not be embedded within
Representation Expressions.

The specification needs to be clear about exactly what is included in basic
Representation Expressions, especially Fact Type Forms, which contain no
embedded markup. It also needs to be clear about the kinds of markup that
can be embedded in Representation Expressions and how to communicate which
markup specification is being used.

SBVR Issue – Clean up and Complete Vocabulary for Clause 10.1.1 (Was Issues 11296-1a and 11303-b) (Part of Separating 11296 & 11303 into Manageable Pieces)Please see attached Word document for Issue details.

This SBVR spin-off Issue is a part of a package of three proposed Issue resolutions:

• the proposed resolution of this spin-off Issue which will be posted when it has a number;

• the proposed resolution to Issue 12540; and

• the proposed resolution of the Issue 12540 spin-off Issue which will be posted when it has a number.

Disposition: Resolved
OMG Issue No: ????
Title: Need business-oriented verb concepts to support "local closure"
Source:
Mark H. Linehan, IBM Research
Summary:
Clause 10.1.1.3 has an extensive discussion of "Open/Closed World Semantics". In particular, the penultimate paragraph near the bottom of page 94 of version 1.0 of the specification says:
"For any given schema, the business might have complete knowledge about some parts and incomplete knowledge about other parts. So in practice, a mixture of open and closed world assumptions may apply. We use the term “local closure” (or “relative closure”) for the application of the closed world assumption to just some parts of the overall schema. One might assume open world semantics by default, and then apply local closure to specific parts as desired; or alternatively, assume closed world semantics by default and then apply “local openness.” We adopt the former approach as it seems more realistic when modeling real business domains."

In SBVR 1.0, local closure is supported by the verb concepts "fact type is internally closed in conceptual schema" and "concept is closed in conceptual schema" in clause 8.5. The resolution of issue 13138 moves clause 8.5 to clause 10, thus making these verb concepts no longer available in the normative specification or in the clause 15 supporting documents. The result is that the specification no longer supports the semantics mentioned in the quote given above. This issue requests that similar functionality be added to clause 11.

The original clause 8.5 verb concepts used designations that are not meaningful to business people. The resolution of this issue should adopt business-oriented terminology. Discussions have identified at least four possible approaches:

1. A verb concept "set is completely known", meaning that the semantic community knows all the elements of the set. This would be particularly useful when applied to a set as the extension of a concept.
2. A verb concept "concept has completely known extension". Similar to the above, but applying specifically to the extension of concepts.
3. A verb concept such as "semantic community completely knows concept".
4. Building on the concept "communication concept" in clause 11.2.2.3 to define closure with respect to an information record.

Example use cases for local closure include the following:

Example 1

This example is about a concept called order that includes a list of line items, where each line item has a quantity, a catalog id, etc. A minimal vocabulary is shown here, just enough to illustrate the example.

order
Definition: A customer request for one or more products and a promise to pay the total cost of the order.
line item
Definition: Details about an order for a particular product.
quantity
Definition: positive integer that is the number of units of the product that is desired by the customer
catalog id
Definition: text that identifies the product desired by the customer
line item has quantity
Necessity: Each line item has exactly one quantity.
line item has catalog id
Necessity: Each line item has exactly one catalog id.
order includes line item
Necessity: Each order includes at least one line item.
"order includes line item" is internally closed in the business xx conceptual schema

The "internally closed" fact says that the business knows all the line items that are included in each order: there are no other line items. Consider a rule such as "Each order must be shipped within 24 hours if the order does not include a line item that has quantity greater than 100." As described in clause 10.1.1.3, this rule makes no sense with the default SBVR "open world" semantics because under those semantics, the business cannot know that no "line item that has quantity greater than 100".

Example 2

Consider a business that has a vocabulary about employees. The business considers it knows all its employees; there are no employees that it does not know.

employee
Definition: person that works for the business

Under SBVR's default open world semantics, the glossary entry given above is insufficient because it does not capture the business sense that it knows all its employees. To accomplish that, the vocabulary needs the following:
"employee" is closed in the business xx conceptual schema

Example 3

Continuing example 2, suppose the business needs concepts relating to employee names and work phone numbers:

employee name
Definition: text that identifies an employee
work phone number
Definition: number used to phone an employee at work

The business requires that it knows the employee name of each employee because the government requires this information on tax and employment reports. So the employee name is authoritative.

The business knows that, in practice, it does not know the work phone number of each employee. These change too often to keep up with.

SBVR needs verb concepts to express the idea that the employee name is reliably know, but the work phone number is not reliably known.

Resolution:
Revised Text:
Disposition:

Inconsistent use of terminology when relating facts to fact types

It has been noted that there are a few places in clause 10 where the relationship between facts and fact types are described using inconsistent language. SBVR makes clear that not every fact is of a particular fact type – obviously, some facts are formulated using quantifiers, logical operators, etc. SBVR makes clear that instances of fact types are actualities, not facts. SBVR describes concepts as having instances, but not facts as having instances. A few places in clause 10 can be lead to confusion in this regard. They are listed below with recommended rewordings.

Thanks go to Mark Linehan who graciously went through clause 10 last September and located these places.

Recommended changes:

1. In the third paragraph of the introduction to clause 10, REMOVE the sentence that says:

A ‘Fact’ is of a particular ‘Fact Type.’

2. REPLACE the third paragraph of 10.1.1.2, which says this:

The conceptual schema declares the fact types (kinds of facts, such as “Employee works for Department”) and rules relevant to the business domain.

With this:

The conceptual schema declares the fact types (such as “Employee works for Department”) and rules relevant to the business domain.

3. In the last paragraph of page 89 (in 10.1.1.2) there is a sentence that says:

The fact model includes both the conceptual schema and the ground fact population (set of fact instances that instantiate the fact types in the schema).

REPLACE it with this:

The fact model includes both the conceptual schema and the ground fact population (set of facts that are formulated using the fact types and other concepts in the schema).

4. Just above figure 10.1 on page 90 there is the following sentence.

Figure 10-1 provides a simplified picture of this situation, indicating that the fact model of sentences expressing population facts (instances of domain-specific fact types) is a varset (variable-set) whose population at any given time is a set of facts.

REPLACE it with this:

Figure 10-1 provides a simplified picture of this situation, indicating that the fact model of sentences expressing population facts (formulated using domain-specific fact types) is a varset (variable-set) whose population at any given time is a set of facts.

The Structured English keyword "another" is sometimes ambiguous. For an example, in the following rule, it is formally not clear whether "another <person3>" refers to <person1> and/or <person2>:

It is prohibited that a <person1> <is married to> <person2>, if that <person1> <is married to> another <person3>.

'quantity' is defined informally. A formalization of the existing definition is proposed, along with changes in terminology and related entries that would be affected by the change.

The proposed changes unify some fundamental concepts in SBVR and application domains and significantly enhance the ability to reason about SBVR models.

Full details are provided in a paper I authored but am unable to attach to this message because of limitations of this OMG Web site, which does not accept attachments. Please contact me if you would like to review the paper, and I'll send it by email.

SBVR provides for a speech community to adopt a definition, or an element of guidance, but no clear way for a vocabulary to adopt a term and its definition from another vocabulary. The Date Time Vocabulary (clause 4) formally adopts a set of terms from the SBVR specification with the intent that the term means the definition given in SBVR and has whatever other associations that term may have to other adopted SBVR terms. (This is the usual practice for adopted terminology in an ISO standard.) But SBVR does not provide a formal expression for this. Instead, it appears that DTV must introduce all the required SBVR terms and their definitions and then cite SBVR as the Source of the definitions. (This is a practice ISO recommends against, because of the problem of synchronization of changes.) We believe that this is a shortcoming in SBVR.

Spin-off from Issue 14843 (via Issue 15623 Issue Resolution into which it was Merged)
The definition-based model specified in Clauses 8, 9, 10, 12 and 13 and the fact model defined in Clause 10 are different (although closely related) models. The differences between them should be described and a transformation from one to the other defined.
The underlying issue is:
1. SBVR’s metamodel is defined in Clauses 8, 9, 10, 12 and 13. Its instances (domain models) are linguistic models of meanings.
2. The model defined in Clause 10 is included in the normative SBVR model to support a formal logic interpretation of SBVR’s metamodel. Its instances (domain models) are fact models.
The proposed resolution is:
1. State, in introductory text in Clauses 8 and 10, that the models are different
2. Somewhere in Clause 10:
a. List the major differences between the two models
b. Describe informally what transformation would be needed to derive a domain fact model from a corresponding linguistic model. It is probably beyond the scope of this RTF to develop a formal specification

Resolution:
1. Add a subclause to Subclause 10.1.1 to discuss to an appropriate level of detail all aspects of the relationship between the concepts in the SBVR Vocabularies in Clauses 7, 8, 9, 11 & 12 and the formal interpretation in Subclause 10.1.1, as well as removing ambiguity from Clause 10.1.1 by consistent use of terms intension, extension, fact population, and the set of all possible facts..

Rectifying the Relationship Between SBVR and ISO 1087 Terms "Concept System" and "Relation"

SBVR uses two terms "concept system" and "relation" found in ISO 1087 but extends these notions in important ways. Specifically, SBVR supports more "elements of concept system structure" than ISO 1087 does – especially, but not exclusively, associations (verb concepts). ISO 1087 defines only some kinds of relation, such as 'generic relation', 'partitive relation', 'hierarchical relation'. Use of the terms "concept system" and "relation" in SBVR should be rectified.

1. "Concept System" appears in several places in SBVR, as follows:

• In the definition of Characteristic Type (p. 147)
• In the name and definition of "Elements of Concept System Structure" (p. 154)
• In text (p. 190 and p. 195)
  However, "concept system" is not defined in SBVR.

2. "Relation" (in the ISO sense roughly meaning 'connection') appears in several places in SBVR, as follows:

• In the definition of Body of Shared Meaning (p. 142) and in a note for that entry.
• in the definition of Category (p. 148) Note: Its use here may not be inconsistent with ISO.
• In the definition of More General Concept (p. 148) Note: Its use here may not be inconsistent with ISO.

RESOLUTION

1. "Concept System" is a synonym in SBVR for "Body of Shared Concepts" and should be explicitly treated as such.
2. "Concept System" should be indicated as the preferred term for the concept "Body of Shared Concepts". ("Body of Shared Concepts" is awkward and not memorable.)
3. A Note should be added to the entry for "Body of Shared Concepts" indicating ISO 1087 as the source for the term "concept system". Note: The ISO definition should not be indicated as the Basis for the entry since the ISO meaning is much more restricted.
4. Replace "relation" with "connection" in the definition of Body of Shared Meaning (p. 142) and in a note for that entry.
5. Replace "relation" with "connection" in the definitions of Category (p. 148) and More General Concept (p. 148).

Describing the facts of a fact model, SBVR’s clause 10 says, “Population facts are restricted to elementary and existential facts.”

This “restriction” appears to be a restriction on the clause 10 mapping to a relational database, requiring a sort of normalization. It is certainly not a restriction discernable from SBVR’s definition of “fact model”. Nor is it a restriction on formal interpretation of fact models for knowledge bases in general. Facts that do not fall into those two categories (elementary and existential) can occur in fact models and can be mapped to formal logic. They can be formulated using concepts in a fact model’s conceptual schema, even if they cannot be formulated using those concepts in a way that is considered existential or elementary. Facts can be formulated using disjunction, universal quantification, etc.

A fact model can have a fact like the following, not as a rule in its schema, but simply as a fact:

“Every son of Mary has a car and a kayak”.

Whether this is a “good” fact in terms of being structured according to best practices is not relevant. Once we have a fact model, then we can use tools or guidelines to measure quality and recommend improvements. But that comes after we have fact model to examine.

Is the fact elementary? Not if it can break into “Every son of Mary has a car” and “Every son of Mary has a kayak”.

Is it existential? I cannot see it that way.

But it can map to formal logic, so clause 10 of SBVR should accommodate that mapping. It does not map directly into a relational table, but there is no reason to limit SBVR’s formal underpinnings to relational modeling.

As it turns out, clause 10 would handle the fact, “Every son of Mary has a car and a kayak”, just fine as long as it is formulated using a unary fact type as would be represented by a unary predicate like this: EverySonOfHasACarAndAKayak(Mary). That sort of contrived fact type is not likely to be found in a conceptual schema made up of meanings of words in a business vocabulary. Requiring a fact model with a business origin to have such a contrived fact type in its conceptual schema is inappropriate for SBVR, even though such contriving is sometimes part of database design. Conceptual schemas based on business vocabularies, rather than database design, involve meanings of words used by business people. Use of such vocabularies starts with an assumption that basic language works (quantifiers, conjunction, disjunction, restriction, demonstration, etc.) for putting words together to make statements. So formulations of facts so stated can tend towards complex formulations involving various sorts of quantifications, objectifications, logical operators, etc. Mapping such fact models into normalized databases is great, but requiring a direct mapping is not and must not be a limitation imposed by SBVR.

Some confusion is created in clause 10 from using the words “elementary” and “existential” as attributes of facts, when they seem to be attributes of formulations of facts, not of the facts themselves. For example, if the characteristic ‘employee number is assigned’ is define as “there exists an employee that has the employee number”, then by definitional substitution, these are two statements of the very same fact:

Employee number 777 is assigned.

There exists an employee that has the employee number 777.

So we have one fact that appears to be both elementary and existential. The difference is in formulation, not the fact.

It would be more clear for clause 10 to apply the ideas of “ground”, “elementary” and “existential” to formulation of facts rather than to facts. “Population” in the clause 10 sense seems to be strictly tied to formulation. It gives an example: “pop(Employee drives Car)= set of (employee, car) pairs …”.

Recommendation:

Remove the clause 10 general “restriction” to elementary and existential facts. Any such restriction should apply only to the clause’s relational mappings.

In clause 10, clarify how the concepts of “ground”, “elementary”, “existential” and “population” are tied to formulation.

OMG Issue No: 16685
Title: Fix Entries in Subclause 10.1.2.1 to Align with Subclause 10.1
Source:
SBVR Co-chair, Donald Chapin [Donald.Chapin@BusinessSemantics.com]
Summary:
Spin-off from Resolution of Issue 15623 (and 14843 which was Merged into it)
Fix the entries in SBVR Subclause 10.1.2.1 to bring them in line with what Clause 10.1 says as revised by the resolution to Issues 15623 & 14843.

Clause 10 of SBVR provides a formal logic interpretation of SBVR in terms of Object Role Modeling (ORM).

There has been a long-standing agreement within the OMG community to provide a formal interpretation in terms of Common Logic (CL). CL is an ISO standard (ISO 24707) for which there is an OMG standard metamodel in the Ontology Definition Metamodel (ODM) specification, and which is being used as a basis for logical interpretation in the OMG Date Time vocabulary.

A partial interpretation of SBVR in CL is given in clause 10.2, but significant work is needed to complete this grounding. Completion is essential to supporting downstream alignment of OMG specifications that are expressed in terms of other logic languages, to reuse of SBVR vocabularies by commercial rule engines, and to facilitate interoperability with other work in the ISO community. It may also be needed to support development of new vocabularies in SBVR, such as potential financial services vocabularies related to the FIBO (Financial Industry Business Ontology) effort in the Finance DTF.

Definite descriptions do not always define individual concepts

The entry for ‘definite description’ in SBVR 11.1.3 includes this structural rule:

Necessity: Each definite description is the definition of an individual concept.

The rule is incorrect. A definite description defining a concept in a schema might well be taken as defining an individual concept, but a definite description within a statement of a fact in a model need not define an individual concept because it need not identify the same individual in all possible worlds. It would identify an individual in the world described by the fact. Similarly, a definite description in the context of a rule statement might identify a single individual in each situation addressed by the rule, but not necessarily the same individual in all possible worlds. E.g., “the previous calendar month” definitely describes one month, but which month it describes depends on the current month, which can vary across possible worlds.

Also, a note should be added to the entry for “definite description” to point out that the one thing defined by a definite description can be a set (e.g., “the cars owned by EU-Rent”, which, by the way, is not the same set in all possible worlds).

Date/Time Annex F is titled: Annex F Simplified Syntax for Logical Formulations.

First, the title is wrong. The Date/Time standard contains logical formulations in OCL and CLIF. This Annex is a syntax for SBVR 'logical formulations', and this language, like SBVR Structured English, is somehow related to the vocabulary of SBVR clause 9. It should be titled: Simplified Syntax for SBVR Logical Formulations.

Secondly, as a consequence, this Annex is totally out of place in the Date/Time Vocabulary specification. If this is a useful notation for SBVR formulations, and is used in the SBVR community, then it should surely be an informative annex to the SBVR v1.1 specification, and simply be referenced in the Date/Time Annex (E) that uses it. If it is not used in the SBVR community, then it is certainly inappropriate for Date/Time to include it.
Recommendation: Delete Annex F and refer to the OMG (SBVR) specification that actually includes it. Otherwise, use a standardized SBVR notation in Annex E.
The Date/Time final submission should have identified Annex F as a proposed addition to the SBVR specification – a new informative Annex, and we may assert that OMG adoption of the Date/Time submission constitutes adoption of Annex F as an addition to the SBVR specification.

Annex H provides detailed guidance on the representation of SBVR vocabulary concepts in UML diagrams. Much of that guidance produces invalid UML constructs per UML 2.4.

H.1 "If there are additional terms for the concept they can be added within the rectangle, labeled as such – e.g., “also: is-category-of
fact type” as depicted in Figure H.1." There is no UML syntax for this.

H.2 "Alternatively, an individual concept can be depicted as an instance of its related general concept (noun concept), as in Figure H.3." The diagram uses an unidentified Dependency, which has no meaning. It should be formally stereotyped.

H.3.1 shows three representations of the fact type 'semantic community shares understanding of concept'. The third is invalid – an association can have only one name. Also the name of the association is 'shares understanding of'; it does not include the placeholder terms.

H.3.1 Figure H.4 shows associations that are navigable in both directions, inducing unnamed UML properties on 'semantic community' and 'concept' that are not intended. (This is a vestige of UML v1 ambiguity.) It should show no navigable ends, using UML 2.4 syntax.

H.3.4 Figure H.9 depicts an invalid relationship symbol; an association is required to have 2 or more roles.

H.4.2 Figure H.11 shows a stereotype <<is role of>> on a Generalization. I'm not sure this is valid UML, but in any case such a stereotype would have to be defined in a formal Profile. (Semantically, some "roles" are object types that specialize more general concepts, others are association ends (verb concept roles), and others are things in their own right that have the property 'role has occupant'.)

H.4.3 suggests that there is no consistent mapping for association names. In any case, the UML model of a 'fact type role' is a named association end, regardless of ownership.

H.6.1 Figure H.14. It is not clear what UML element has the name "Results by Payment type", and the text does not say. It may be a GeneralizationSet.

H.6.2 Figure H.16. ":modality" appears to be a TagValue associated with some unnamed and undefined Tag, or it may just be another string that names no model element.

H.8 In, Figure H.17 there is a meaningless dashed line between 'car recovery' and a ternary association (verb concept). It is said to represent 'objectification'. That dashed line should be a Dependency that has a stereotype indicating the nature of that relationship, e.g., <<objectification>>, defined in a Profile.

H.9 says that the default multiplicity on association ends is 0..*. According to the UML metamodel v2.4, the default multiplicity on a UML association end is 1..1, i.e., exactly one. This makes most of the SBVR UML diagrams implicitly erroneous.

So Annex H needs to be rewritten, and if it is to include standard stereotypes and tag values, it needs a standard UML Profile that defines them.

Further, it demonstrates the need for minor repairs to the UML diagrams throughout SBVR, to make them match the MOF model described in Clause 13.

When DTV v1.0-alpha was adopted, it contained a proposed simplified text representation for SBVR LRMV constructs (as distinct from the long and involved sequences of sentences used in SBVR examples, that make references to undefined concepts like'first variable'). The DTV FTF resolved issues about the disposition of the annex containing this SBVR LRMV notation by improving the description of the notation, but also revising the informative text that used the notation in such a way that the notation is no longer used in DTV. This LRMV notation therefore no longer has a use in DTV and is out of scope for the DTV specification. It is likely that the annex (DTV v1.1 Annex F) will be deleted from DTV v1.2.

The simplified LRMV notation has value for the wider SBVR community, and its description should be an informative Annex to SBVR. It is within the expertise and purview of the SBVR RTF to address any problems with the notation specification, and to maintain alignment with the SBVR specification generally. Accordingly, the SBVR RTF should maintain the adopted text of DTV Annex F as an Annex to SBVR.

Many business rules, laws of nature, etc., are given ‘names’ that are representations of those rules/laws as ‘individual concepts’.

For example, “Murphy’s Law” represents the proposition: Anything that can go wrong will. Similarly, “Newton’s First Law of Motion” represents the proposition: A body at rest will stay at rest unless acted on by an outside force. (Laws like “Sarbanes-Oxley” are not just propositions, they are actually bodies of guidance.)

What is the SBVR relationship between these signifier expressions and the propositions? The expressions are very like designations, there are different expressions in different languages, and a few such ‘laws’ are known by different names in different subject areas. But it does not appear that they can be contained in Vocabularies or terminological dictionaries.

These representations cannot be ‘designations’. Propositions cannot be (individual) concepts, unless the dichotomy of ‘meaning’ (= concept xor proposition) is not valid. And they are clearly not ‘statements’.

SBVR apparently assume that business terms are composed of natural language words, and that those words may have multiple morphemes that are nonetheless the same word and the same term. That is, a vocabulary term like 'purchase contract' may also have the form 'purchase contracts', and a vocabulary term like 'is owned by' may be expressed as 'has been owned by'. But SBVR says nothing about any of this in defining 'designation' or 'signifier'.
When a signifier for the same concept is in a formal language like OWL or CLIF, this idea of multiple morphemes is not (usually) part of the language syntax. So this should be carefully addressed.

For the SBVR Structured English language, Annex C.1 explicitly says that these alternate morphemes are "implicitly available for use", which may mean they are treated as equivalent, or just that they are recognized as uses of the same designation.

In natural language, such morphemes carry additional meaning , e.g., plurality or tense or mood. And a morphological variant of the same designation may or may not carry additional meaning, This is important, because SBVR examples assume that plurals are conventional and irrelevant, but the Date Time Vocabulary says that the use of verb tenses in natural language conveys indexical time intent. That is:
'John is in London' and 'John was in London' have different meanings in English. Do they have different meanings in SBVR SE?
And if so, do they always have different meanings? Natural language convention requires that a statement that dates a past event uses the past tense, e.g., 'John was in London in 2008.' Is it meaningful in SBVR SE to say (in 2012) 'John is in London in 2008'? And does that mean a different proposition from 'John was in London in 2008'?

Inadequate, Overlapping and Disorganized Specifications for Sets and Collections of Concepts, Meanings, and Representations

Problem:

Assumptions

Two assumptions are basic to the eight points of this problem statement:
• SBVR must provide a business vocabulary for business people and business analysts to talk clearly and precisely about terminological dictionaries and rulebooks and what they represent.
• The various aspects of this Issue must be addressed holistically. They can be resolved only by unifying, normalizing and completing all related specifications. (Thus, the need for a new unifying Issue.)

Problems

1. A known problem in SBVR is that the current version does not make clear what the fundamental unit of interoperability in SBVR is. No matter how that issue is resolved the unit should:
• Be identifiable from a business point of view.
• Not always have to be the full, non-redundant set of concepts, meanings, or representations.
The existing content of Clause 11 does not currently provide an adequate term for the second of these. This Issue proposes “collection” for that purpose.

Note: The term “collection” in the following discussion is never actually used on its own. Rather, it always appears with qualification – e.g., ‘collection of representations’.

2. Another known problem in SBVR centers on the use of the word “container” in e-mails and discussion. (Use of the signifier “container” per se is not part of this Issue.) It is unclear (to some) whether “container” refers to the ‘thing that contains’, to ‘what is contained’, or to both. The term is easily misused and misinterpreted. Also there are many variations of what is (or could be) contained (e.g., sets, collections, etc.). SBVR needs a precise, non-overlapping vocabulary for these things from a business point of view.

3. Another known problem in SBVR is that the existing content of Clause 11.2.2.3 “communication content” (a.k.a. “document content”) is not adequate for all purposes to which it might be put. SBVR needs a richer (but still minimal) set of concepts to address this area.

4. Certain existing terms in the existing content of Clause 11 (e.g., ‘terminological dictionary’ and ‘rulebook’) conflate ‘completeness and non-redundancy’ (i.e., being a set) with ‘primary purpose’ or ‘essence’. This conflation needs to be eliminated. In the real world for example, a rulebook does not have to be complete (e.g., it may contain only what is appropriate for a given audience), and it does not have to be non-redundant. It can contain the same rule statements in different sections, the intent being to provide the greatest clarity when being used by members of some speech community.

5. SBVR currently provides no means to talk about a collection of representations that is complete with respect to one or more specific concepts, but not complete with respect to all concepts in the body of shared meanings. Example: A listing of all baseball rules that address the concepts “strike” and “ball” only.

6. With respect to interoperability there is a minimum set of pragmatic business specifications (such as completeness, effective date, shelf life, mutability, etc.) needed for things communicated. SBVR does not currently support such specifications.

Note: There is no intent or need to get into document management or rule management. The dividing line is this: SBVR does not get into organizational issues (e.g., author, sponsor, reviewer, etc.), workflow issues (e.g., status, pre-approval distribution, sign-off, impact assessment, etc.), motivation (rationale, goals, risks), etc. SBVR must, however, provide minimum viability criteria for any sets or collections communicated. Otherwise the communicated content is not really useful and trustworthy on the receiving end. Consequently the purpose of interoperability is defeated.

7. Certain kinds of collections relevant to inter-operability are missing from the current content of Clause 11 – most notably ‘record’ (not IT ‘records’). Proper incorporation of this and other kinds of collections is needed.

8. Issue 16103, which addresses “speech community representation”, needs to be worked into a holistic solution.

The precedence of logical operators ("and", "or", etc.) in Structure English is unspecified which may make some rules ambiguous. Furthermore, they sould be called "operators" and not "operations".

The objectification example “EU-Rent reviews each corporate account at EU-Rent Headquarters” in SBVR v1.1 clause 9.2.7 (as modified per the resolution to issue 16309), is expressed in the usual sequence of sentences. The formal logic interpretation of those sentences is:
For each corporate account A, there exists a state of affairs S such that

S objectifies “EU-Rent reviews A”,

and S occurs at EU Rent HQ.

Now, per Clause 8 there is only one such state of affairs; and its existence is a given, that is, for every proposition of the form ‘company reviews account’, the corresponding state of affairs necessarily exists. But nothing is said here about that state of affairs being actual. Moreover, since there is probably more than one “occurrence” of that state of affairs, the definition of ‘state of affairs occurs at place’ would be less than obvious. Or is it the intent that there is only one review of each corporate account? Whatever it means for an abstract state of affairs (that might be a set, including the empty set) to ‘occur at a place’, it is not clear, and it is important to the example of objectification – what is the state of affairs that it produces.

In SBVR v1.0, the variable S ranges over the verb concept ‘company reviews account’, because the instances of the verb concept were then said to be actualities. The resolution of Issue 14849 makes instances of a verb concept ‘states of affairs’ instead of actualities. But states of affairs need not be actual. It is obvious that some thought was given to this example, because v1.1 changed it. What is not clear is whether it is any closer to what was intended.

A definition of ‘state of affairs occurs at place’ should probably follow the DTV pattern for ‘state of affairs occurs at time’. In DTV parlance, what was intended is: Each occurrence of the state of affairs “EU Rent reviews A” ‘occurs at’ EU Rent HQ. But SBVR lacks the vocabulary to express that.

There two closely related flaws in SBVR Clause 8.1:
1. a conflation of 'proposition' with "'performative' + 'proposition'"
2. a disconnect between 'concept' and its subcategories and 'proposition' and its subcategories which are really one concept or two perspectives on the same thing.

Conflation of 'Proposition' with "'Performative' + 'Proposition'"

• 'proposition' meaning that is true or false (the "semantic content"
  part in 'proposition' + performative')

• 'proposition' + 'performative' (where the 'performative' part is the
  "communicative function") e.g.:

o proposition + "deontic" performative = behavioral guidance
o proposition + "alethic" performative = definitional rule
o proposition + "taken to be true" performative = fact

The core meanings are in the propositions which are then made into something else by combination with a particular performative. This is why there is no reason to include the concept 'fact' at all in Clauses 8, 9 11 or 12 except to support the formulation of fact statements – which are really out of scope for a standard for "concept(definition)-centric special purpose business language dictionaries plus guidance specifications in terms those definiton-centric dictionaries". Examples of general concepts can be provided by using names and fact type forms of individual concepts without needing to turn the individual concepts into facts (by adding the performative "taken to be true") so that fact statements can be used as examples.

Disconnect between 'Concept' and its Subcategories and 'Proposition' and its Subcategories

Clause 8.1 defines two concepts ('concept' and 'proposition') as if they were completely separate things when in fact they are at most two perspectives on the same thing:

· general noun concept = open (existential) proposition
· individual noun concept = closed (existential) proposition
· general verb concept = open (relational) proposition
· individual verb concept = closed (relational) proposition
(this is the verb concept that corresponds to a given state of affairs)

Resolution:
Remove the Conflation of 'Proposition' with "'Performative' + 'Proposition'"
1. Add the concept (definition) for "performative" and term it "communicative function" [3.7] as per ISO/CD 24617-2 "Language resource management – Semantic annotation framework (SemAF) – Part 2: Dialogue acts".
2. Add the three performative (communicative function) individual concepts used in SBVR: "taken to be true", "true by definition", and behavioral guidance.
3. Add the concept (definition) for "performative' + proposition" and term it "dialogue act" [3.2], as per ISO/CD 24617-2.
4. Show fact, behavioral guidance, and definitional guidance as concept type dialogue act with their respective performative (communicative function) instances instead of their current definition as subcategories of proposition.
5. Review all references to 'proposition' to determine whether the intended reference is to semantic content or to a discourse act (proposition + performative); e. g. statement expresses dialogue act (not proposition).
Remove the Disconnect between 'Concept' and its Subcategories and 'Proposition' and its Subcategories
1. Add open/closed proposition categories, and existential/relational proposition categories.
2. Fix the subcategories of concept to fit the above, and have both 'concept' and 'proposition' as more general concepts for the subcategories.
3. Replace all current uses of 'individual concept' to 'individual noun concept'.

Revised Text:
…to follow, including redrawn diagram(s)

SBVR 1.2 beta annex G (EU Rent Example) adopts concepts from the Date-Time Vocabulary (DTV) but deliberately gives them names that are both inconsistent with DTV and in fact are confusingly similar to the names of other concepts that are defined in DTV. Although any business can use any vocabulary terms desired, an OMG standard should maintain consistency with other OMG vocabularies for reasons of quality and to avoid user confusion. Especially a portion of a standard that is specifically intended to "to provide an aid to help them understand the specification " (annex G.2).

The Annex is also inconsistent in its own terminology with respect to dates and times. For example, "maximum rental period" (Annex G.6.6) is a kind of "duration" even though G.8.6 defines "period" as a kind of "time interval" and a "rental period" (G.6.8.3) is a kind of "period".

This annex also defines its own concepts that relate states of affairs to time, and for quantities – rather than using the corresponding concepts defined by the Date-Time Vocabulary. It fails to give definitions for these concepts, which means they are subject to varying interpretations. The example would be stronger if it used the carefully worked-out concepts defined in the Date-Time Vocabulary.

Specifically:

• Annex G.8.4 specifies, but does not define, concepts such as "state of affairs at point in time". 'Point in time' is a synonym for Date-Time's 'time point', which is a time interval that is a single member of a time scale. The authors of this Annex apparently did not understand that the duration of a time point depends upon the granularity of the time scale that is used. Consider a time scale of years. What does it mean to say that a "state of affairs at [a year]? Is the state of affairs "at" throughout the year or just during some portion of the year. The Annex G concept is fundamentally ambiguous.
• Annex G.8.5 defines concepts such as "period", "period1 overlaps period2", and many others, using the definitions from Date-Time's "time interval", "time interval1 overlaps time interval2", etc., but with its own terms. This is particularly confusing because Date-Time has other concepts with similar names, such as "time period". (I do not object to terms that are clearly business specific, such as "rental period".) Moreover, the Annex probably should be built on the DTV "time period" concept, rather than "time interval". The discussion of the "Rental Time Unit" makes it clear that EU-Rent is interested in periods that are based on calendars (i.e. DTV "time period") rather than arbitrary periods ("time interval"). Probably the authors of the Annex did not understand the difference.
• Annex G.8.5 defines a concept "date-time1 is before date-time2" that is unnecessary in light of the fact that a "date-time" is a kind of "time coordinate", which is a representation of a "time interval". The existing "time interval1 precedes time interval2" is applicable to all time coordinates, in the same way that representations of quantities (e.g. "5") may be used in instance of the verb concept "quantity1 is less than quantity2".
• Annex G.8.5 misquotes some definitions from the Date-Time Vocabulary. For example, the definition of "current day" is misquoted.
• The concept "date time" is defined twice: in G8.5 and in G.8.9.5. Another concept "date-time" has almost the same spelling, but has a different definition – another likely source of user confusion. Plus the definition does not make sense.
• The Annex mixes two distinct types of concepts: "time intervals" (spans of time) and "time coordinates" (representations of time intervals). It should use one or the other throughout. The confusion is particularly obvious in places like the definition of "rental is late", which talks about the "end date-time" of a "grace period".

In the SBVR Meaning and Representation Vocabulary, the entries for ‘noun concept’ and ‘verb concept’ contain reference schemes that refer to the concept ‘closed projection’ and related fact types that do not appear in the MRV itself. In the MRV per se, these are undefined terms. I am told, but do not find in SBVR v1.2, that if only the MRV is implemented, such Reference Schemes are ignored, while clause 13.4.2 explicitly says that the UML/MOF classes must have the corresponding properties. If properly documented, this approach may be fine for the specification of SBVR itself. In general, however, this approach assumes that the speech community that develops a formal vocabulary is omniscient about reference schemes used by speech communities who ADOPT the original vocabulary. In general, an adopting community might add new fact types about an adopted concept that result in new reference schemes for the concept. Also, the adopting community might add new synonyms or synonymous forms for an adopted concept. There is no reason to suppose that the original speech community is even aware of the adoption, and there is no way these additional elements can have been present in the original terminological entry. So, the approach used in SBVR itself is unworkable for general use.

When a concept is adopted by another vocabulary, it should be expressly possible for the “adopting entry” to include new reference schemes and synonymous forms, and possibly other elements of a terminological entry.

Further, if such a mechanism is introduced, the SBVR vocabularies themselves should use it, rather than incorporating reference schemes in the base terminology entry that refer to fact types that don’t exist in that vocabulary per se. For example, the LRMV should formally adopt the MRV concepts and add the reference schemes involving closed projections in the ADOPTING ‘noun concept’ and ‘verb concept’ entries.

In clause 8.1.1.1, we have "fact type has role", with a synonymous form
"fact type role is in fact type". Figure 8.2 also shows "fact type role
is in fact type".

Issue: a "fact type role" is a specialization of "role", so it is confusing
to see the preferred form of the fact type use "role" but the synonymous
form use "fact type role". Especially because figure 8.2 seems to indicate
that a "fact type role" is in a fact type but that a "role" is explicitly
not in a fact type. So the figure appears to contradict "fact type has
role".

Recommendation: I think the preferred entry is wrong, and should be changed
to "fact type has fact type role".

'categorization scheme' and 'categorization type' are related, yet SBVR says nothing about this relationship.

Upon comparing the entries for these terms in 11.2.2.3, it is seen they are coextensive; the extension of each is a set of concepts; they could be defined having the same extensions. Compare the examples in each entry.

A difference is that categorization schemes are restricted to categorizing general concepts, whereas categorizations types are not so restricted.

Another difference is that categorization schemes define partitionings, whereas categorization type are not so restricted.

Accordingly, it seems like the definition should be:
categorization scheme: categorization type that defines a partitioning of one or more general concepts.

'categorization type' is defined in such a way that it is not meaningfully different from 'concept type' (p.22); compare the definitions on p.22 with that on p.149. A concept, by its very nature and definition, defines a category of things. See 'concept', p.21. 'categorization type' should be made a synonym of 'concept type'.

'Categorization scheme' is involved in the verb concept 'categorization scheme is for general concept'. The general concept(s) are inferred by the general concepts of the concepts in a categorization scheme or a categorization type coextensive with the it. This verb concept is not necessary.

'Categorization scheme' is involved in verb concept 'categorization scheme contains category'. Either can be defined to have the same extension, by an extensive definition. This verb concept is not necessary.

The two verb concepts mentioned above are redundant; their purpose is more simply served by providing extensional definitions of categorization types and categorization schemes, as suggested by the examples. They could be deprecated or deleted, as they do not add any new information to a model. They increase the complexity and maintenance burden on the model.

The changes suggested here would affect Figure 11.2 on p.146.

In SBVR clause 8.3.4, in the entry for ‘placeholder’, it is stated that a placeholder exists in only one verb concept wording, and it refers to some role of the verb concept in that wording. It follows that the two placeholders spelled ‘concept1’ in ‘concept1 specializes concept2’ and in the Synonymous form: ‘concept2 generalizes concept1’ (in 8.1.1.1) refer to two roles of the verb concept being defined. Since these two placeholders spelled ‘concept1’ are different designations, how are they related?

Annex C.3.1 does not say anything about the relationship between placeholders in the primary verb concept wording and placeholders in synonymous forms. (It just says something about subscripts being used to differentiate placeholders.) The intent is that the placeholder expression represents the SAME verb concept role in ALL primary and synonymous forms. That is, the placeholder is the SAME DESIGNATION in all verb concept wordings for the same verb concept. The text of 8.3.4 contradicts this intent, saying that the placeholder only has meaning within a given verb concept wording. If the text is correct, it is necessary to state some rule about the meaning of the same placeholder expression (the distinct designation) in the different synonymous forms.

Further, in the Definition of ‘concept1 specifies concept2’, the expression ‘concept1’ appears. Since that expression only refers to a verb concept role within a verb concept wording, it is utterly meaningless in the Definition! There are no placeholders in a Definition, and ‘concept1’ is not a signifier for any concept. And yet, the intent is that ‘concept1’ in the Definition is the placeholder expression and is intended to be interpreted as a reference to the thing that plays that verb concept role in an actuality of ‘concept1 specializes concept2’. Annex C says nothing about the use of placeholder expressions in Definitions, and 8.3.4 makes these usages meaningless, but they appear in every verb concept definition in SBVR.

It appears that the real intent is that a placeholder expression refers to one and the same verb concept role throughout the terminological entry for the verb concept, including at least all synonymous forms and definitions. Whether it also refers to the verb concept role in embedded Necessities needs to be clarified (it is not clear that SBVR ever assumes that, but DTV apparently does). The only aspect of a placeholder that is specific to a given verb concept wording is the ‘starting character position’, which suggests only that that relationship should be ternary, i.e., placeholder has starting character position in verb concept wording.

New SBV issue: Distinguishing the senses of infinitive and present tense
From Don Baisley

There are many verbs for which the present tense of a verb conveys a particularly different sense than the infinitive. The difference I refer to is not about "the present time", but about "occurring at least occasionally". For example, the statement that "Pam surfs" (present tense) combines the meaning of "to surf" (the infinitive) and the meaning that “it happens at least occasionally”.

For such verbs, there is a challenge when using SBVR's typical pattern of defining verb concepts in the present tense. It tends to conflate the infinitive sense of a verb with the different sense meant by the present tense. That conflation causes problems. This is not an issue for ORM or other approaches that do not try to support natural language tense in a generic way. The problem has no apparent impact for many verbs where the present tense sense of "occurring at least occasionally" is inconsequential or inapplicable. The problem is especially troublesome for eventive verbs. Most SBVR verbs are stative, so the problem has tended to go unnoticed in the SBVR vocabulary itself.
If supporting tense in a generic way, in logical formulations, the other tenses should be built on objectifications that start with the infinitive sense of a verb, not with the present tense. Also, modal operations like obligation build on the infinitive sense.

For examples below, I define verb concept forms for generic "tense" concepts using the verb "occurs" (where the there is a role that ranges over the concept 'state of affairs'). The choices of signifier and form are arbitrary (not necessary), but seem to convey the sense of the tenses naturally.

Example:
'person surfs' (present tense)
'person surf' (the infinitive sense)

Where someone puts 'person surfs' in a business glossary, there is an underlying verb concept that has the sense of "to surf", the infinitive. I show it here in examples as 'person surf' (leaving out the infintizing "to"). This underlying verb concept is necessary to correctly formulate other tenses, and even necessary to formulate use of the present tense in some cases, which I will show later.

Here are several examples of statements and interpretations using generic tense concepts built on the verb "occur". To be terse, I show objectification using brackets.

Pam surfs.
[Pam surf] occurs

Pam is surfing.
[Pam surf] is occurring

Pam was surfing.
[Pam surf] was occurring

Pam has been surfing.
[Pam surf] has been occurring

Pam surfed.
[Pam surf] occurred

Pam will be surfing.
[Pam surf] will be occurring

Pam will surf.
[Pam surf] will occur

Pam will have been surfing.
[Pam surf] will have been occurring

The second example above, "Pam is surfing", can serve to illustrate the need to build on the infinitive rather than the present tense sense. To build on the present tense would be to say the thing that “is occurring” is Pam surfing at least occasionally, which is incorrect. The present continuous and other tenses do not include the present tense sense of occurring at least occasionally, so they cannot rightly be built upon a concept that conveys that sense.

I said above I would show where the infinitive sense is sometimes needed even for the present tense. Here is a case where the infinitive 'person surf' concept is needed to formulate a statement that uses "surf" only in the present tense:

Pam talks while she surfs.

Wrong Interpretation I1: [Pam surfs] occurs while [Pam talks] occurs

I1 misses the key sense of the statement, because [Pam surfs] (present tense) means that surfing is something Pam does at least occasionally and [Pam talks] means that talking is something that Pam does at least occasionally. I1 applies 'state of affairs1 occurs while state of affairs2 occurs' to the wrong states of affairs (the states in which Pam occasionally surfs and Pam occasionally talks).

Right Interpretation I2: [[Pam surf] occur while [Pam talk] occur] occurs

I2 correctly factors out the tense and applies it at an outer level (as we often do with modal operations). The conjunction joins objectifications of the underlying sense of "to surf" and "to talk" without the added meaning of the present tense (that the surfing or talking is at least occasional). The sense of present tense (happening at least occasionally) is then added at the outside where it applies to the simultaneous actions.

SBVR does not prevent verbs concepts from being defined in glossaries in the infinitive , as is typical of dictionary definitions of verbs. That approach has always been available. But that approach is not used in SBVR’s own glossary and examples. In general, the sense of “occurs at least occasionally” is absent from SBVR’s own verb concepts, so the distinction is unimportant. But business rules and facts run into the problem. E.g., a EU-Rent rule about whether a renter smokes vs. a rule about whether he is smoking when in a rental car.

Recommendation:

It will be best to resolve this in a way that does not disturb the business-friendly approach of showing verb concept readings in the present tense. It might be possible to define a pattern in SBVR Structured English by which verb concepts with an infinitive sense are implied where present tense versions are explicitly presented in a glossary.

Examples of formulations need to show the distinction. Existing examples should be examined and fixed as needed. New formulation examples might be helpful to demonstrate using generic tense concepts to build on a root verb concept.
None of this changes the meaning of 'state of affairs' or 'objectification', but understanding this issue and its solution might help bring clarity to some of the examples that have been discussed.

The problem statement: The Annex is out of date with respect to RuleSpeak notation, probably the newly released version of EU-Rent, and perhaps newer aspects of SBVR itself.

Spin-off from Issue 14843 (via Issue 15623 Issue Resolution into which it was Merged)
The definition-based model specified in Clauses 8, 9, 10, 12 and 13 and the fact model defined in Clause 10 are different (although closely related) models. The differences between them should be described and a transformation from one to the other defined. This would address two concerns:
1. Allow the definition-based model to have an open-world assumption and the fact model to have a closed-world assumption.
The proposed resolution is:
1. Define that Clause 10 ‘fact models’ are by default closed world models

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.

understand you will be discussing the topic of packaging SBVR tomorrow, and I want to provide a perspective on this topic and make a request.

In my view, the key packaging concepts “fact model” and “conceptual schema” need to be in the normative SBVR metamodel to support widespread sharing and reuse of SBVR models. We want to promote the development of libraries of SBVR fact models and conceptual schemas and to compose fact models and conceptual schemas from other fact models and conceptual schemas. The ability to package these in a standard way is crucial to this end. A normative approach to globally identifying these models is needed to support their sharing and reuse. Concepts of packaging, identification, and composition of fact models and conceptual schemas are preferably included in Clause 8. As the most basic compliance point, Clause 8 needs to be expressible in terms of itself, and to include concepts for packaging, identification, and composition of fact models and conceptual schemas. I understand a proposal is under consideration to move “fact model” and “conceptual schema” entries to Clause 10. This would be a mistake, as we would then have no normative way of specifying the packaging.

The definition of “conceptual schema” should be refined to reflect the fact that a conceptual schema is a kind of fact model. The distinction between a conceptual schema and other fact models is that a conceptual schema includes at least one fact that asserts the existence of a concept. Other fact models that are not conceptual schemas contain only ground facts. The text of SBVR makes it clear that a conceptual schema is a fact model, that every SBVR interchange document is a fact model. That “conceptual schema” specializes “fact model” should be reflected in the definition of “conceptual schema.”

The term “vocabulary” is not used in the SBVR specification consistently with its definition as a “set of designations and fact type forms…” Each of the normative clauses of SBVR, called a “Vocabulary,” is actually an annotated conceptual schema. A conceptual schema comprises a “combination of concepts and facts (with semantic formulations that define them)…” The designations and fact type forms in each SBVR normative “Vocabulary” constitute the vocabulary of that “Vocabulary”. The definitions and necessities in the SBVR entries are statements of schema facts. The notes and examples are annotations of the conceptual schema. Ability to include annotations is crucial to practical development and use of any model, and is universally provided for in other and modeling and programming languages. It should be possible to normatively include annotations in a SBVR conceptual schema or fact model. Accordingly, it is recommended that “description” and related concepts of notes and examples in Clause 11.2.2 be moved to Clause 8 to support annotation of fact models. With respect to the semantic formulations of a conceptual schema, it is preferred that Clause 8 only include statements of the definitions and schema facts, and leave it to Clause 9 to include the semantic formulations of these. Either “vocabulary namespace” and fact types that use the term should be moved to Clause 11, or “vocabulary” should be moved to Clause 8. The concept “vocabulary” is not necessary in Clause 8 but might be conveniently located there. Namespaces adequately serve the purpose of organizing designations and fact type forms. It is suggested the RTF consider providing recommendations for naming conventions for URIs of namespaces and related conceptual schemas that define and constrain the concepts represented by the designations and fact type forms in the namespaces.

Here are some suggested entries for Clause 8 that show how the concepts described above might be modeled:

conceptual schema

Definition: fact model that includes at least one existential fact asserting a concept

Note: This definition extends the definition of ‘conceptual schema’ in SBVR to formalize that a conceptual schema is a kind of fact model. This is evident in the specification text, but is not included in the current definition.

Note: The facts of a conceptual schema in addition to the concept existential facts describe what is possible, necessary, permissible, and obligatory in each possible world of the domain being modeled.

Note: Two levels of formalization of fact models (including conceptual schemas) are possible. 1) A fact model may contain only statements of definitions and other facts and not their semantic formulations. In this case, the fact model can meet the Meaning and Representation compliance point, 2.2.1. 2) A fact model may contain semantic formulations of its definitions and facts, in which case the fact model can meet the Logical Formulation of Semantics compliance point, 2.2.2.

fact model1 includes fact model2

Note: This fact type enables recursive composition of fact models and conceptual schemas.

Necessity: This fact type is reflexive, antisymmetric, and transitive, i.e. related fact models are at least partially ordered.

fact model includes description

Note: This fact type enables the annotation of fact models and conceptual schemas.

thing has URI

Note: This fact type enables modeled things to be identified globally for future reference.

I am requesting that these concepts, or some refinement of them, be included in the next release of SBVR.

The title of this issue is an example of common problem in SBVR Structured English.

Impossibility: An SBVR SE statement contains a qualifier whose subject is a property of the referent.

Given the verb concept 'sequence has member' aka 'thing is member of sequence', how is the following definition to be written in SBVR SE: "sequence each member of which is a time point"?

The referent of the pronoun 'which' is the sequence, but the subject of the qualifier clause is a quantified property of the referent. But SBVR SE only permits the (anaphor) pronoun to be 'that' or 'who' and apparently requires it to follow the referent noun immediately.

SBVR SE does not permit: "sequence of which each member is a time point".

And it does not provide a 'where' or 'such that' construct that would allow the back reference to be represented by 'the sequence', as in: "sequence where each member of the sequence is a time point".

Even the simpler case of a reference to a unique property of the referent in the qualifier clause --"shipment whose delivery date has passed" – requires a circumlocution ("shipment that has a delivery date that has passed"), because 'whose' is not an SBVR SE keyword. And the cascading 'that's interfere with the expression of compound qualifiers (using 'and that …').

In our experience, this shortcoming significantly limits the clear expression of definitions and rules in SBVR SE.

SBVR Clause 9.2 defines: ‘semantic formulation’ as ‘a conceptual structure of meaning’.

And then closed semantic formulation is defined as 'semantic formulation that includes no variable without binding'

But no SBVR concept associates semantic formulation (in general) with variables. And some other conceptual structure of meaning, e.g., phrased in SBVR structured English or OWL, might not have any notion of ‘variable’ or ‘binding’ at all. So the definition appeals to a delimiting characteristic that may be meaningless for the general concept, and thereby admit semantic formulations that were not intended.

Every structure of meaning presumably formulates a meaning; otherwise it formulates nonsense. But clause 9.2 has only ‘closed semantic formulation formulates meaning’, which suggests that open semantic formulations (involving free variables) formulate nonsense. That is simply not true of a ‘structure of meaning’ formulated in CLIF. What is really meant is that LRMV ‘closed logical formulations’ formulate propositions, and LRMV ‘closed projections’ formulate concepts. But those are special cases.

The definition of ‘closed semantic formulation’ should be ‘closed logical formulation or closed projection’, which makes it clearly an LRMV concept, and then those concepts must state their relationship to free variables.

The general idea for all conceptual structures of meaning is ‘semantic formulation formulates meaning’, which would allow other semantic formulations, e.g., in SBVR SE, OWL, etc., to be related to the meanings they formulate. If an LRMV projection or logical formulation that is not closed does not formulate a meaning, that is a LRMV Necessity for those specific concepts.

Finally, note that a (clause 8) Definition is always a representation of a conceptual structure of meaning that formulates a concept. The important idea in ‘definition serves as designation’ in clause 11.2.3 is that the representation of a semantic formulation (a conceptual structure of meaning) is used to refer to the concept itself, rather than just the properties contained in the formulation. This idea of semantic formulation as conceptual structure of meaning is fundamental to the notion ‘definition’, and should not be buried in the LRMV.

In clause A.2.2, the keyword 'another' is introduced, with the interpretation:

(used with a term that has been previously used in the same statement) existential quantification plus a condition that the referent thing is not the same thing as the referent of the previous use of the term

The idea "existential quantification plus" is an unnecessary and undesirable addition. The useful keyword is 'other'. As described, "other X" means "instance of the general concept X that is not the same thing as the referent of the previous occurrence of the term X". But "another" is just a conventional spelling of "an other", and might equally have been spelled "some other". The term 'other' can be usefully quantified by quantifiers other than "an". Each other, at least n other, at most n other, exactly n other, and no other are all valid uses of 'other' with the given interpretation, less the "existential quantification plus".

Defining only the portmanteau keyword 'another' greatly and unnecessarily limits the expressiveness of SBVR Structured English in this area.

SBVR v1.1 Clause 8 says:
Note: in the glossary entries below, the words “Concept Type: role” indicate that a general concept being defined is a role.
Because it is a general concept, it is necessarily a situational role and is not a verb concept role.

How does one declare an attributive role that is not a general concept?

SBVR v1.1 appears to use such declarations to also declare roles that are attributive roles of a given noun concept and thus also in the attributive namespace of the noun concept. For example, clause 8.6 declares 'cardinality', which is an attributive role of integers with respect to 'sets', in a glossary entry with Concept type: role. But 'cardinality' is not a general concept; nothing is a 'cardinality', full stop. An integer can only be a 'cardinality' OF something. it is a purely attributive term. As a term for a general concept, 'cardinality' is thus a term in the Meaning and Representation namespace; it has no 'context'.

The problem arises in defining attributive roles of general noun concepts, such as 'occurrence has time span' and 'schedule has time span', where the definitions of the two roles are importantly different because they are attributes of different general concepts that are only similar in nature. Neither is a situational role. That is, neither is a general concept. No time interval is a 'time span', full stop. A time interval must be a time span OF something. One 'time span' is in the attributive namespace of 'schedule', and a different 'time span' designation is in the attributive namespace of 'occurrence'. Neither is in the DTV.Situations vocabulary namespace per se. How can this be declared using SBVR conventions? Declaring them both in glossary entries with Concept Type: role apparently makes them conflicting designations for 'situational roles' in the DTV.Situations vocabulary.

Does simply declaring the verb concept 'occurrence has time span' declare the attributive role? If so, how is the range of the role declared? And where does the definition of the attributive role go?

The notion of “well-formedness” in compliance point 1 should be defined

Title: SBVR needs a consistently applied policy for styling or not styling signifiers
Source:
John Hall, RuleML Initiative
john.hall@modelsystems.co.uk
Summary:
There is some inconsistency in the SBVR specification regarding which signifiers are styled and which are not.
A policy needs to be agreed and applied consistently through the SBVR specification.
Resolution:
1. Style each use of the signifier of a concept (e.g. ‘thing’, ‘meaning’) where that use has the specific meaning defined in its SBVR entry;
2. If the signifier of a defined concept has an everyday English meaning that is different from its SBVR definition, don’t style uses of it where the everyday meaning is intended;
3. Add a paragraph to the introduction explaining the basis for styling/not styling.

SBVR defines the concept "thing" in clause 8.7. The
definition is unclear as to whether the extension of "thing" contains only
singletons (i.e. individual things) or can contain instances that recur in
some way.

Proposed Resolution: Add a Necessity or Possibility or Note that explains
whether individual things can recur. Add examples.

The first statement in Annex A.4.2.3 is misleading:

A definition given for a verb concept is an expression that can be substituted for a simple statement expressed using a verb

concept wording of the verb concept.

Unlike a noun concept definition, the definition of a verb concept cannot simply be substituted for an occurrence of the verb concept wording. Like the verb concept wording itself, it is a structured pattern with placeholder parameters, and the substitution process is complex. In “substituting the definition expression for a simple statement expressed using the verb concept wording”, it is also necessary to substitute the role phrases that are used in the verb concept wording in that simple statement for the corresponding placeholders in the definition. That is significantly different from what happens in the noun concept case.

In the same subclause, the sentence:

“A definition of a verb concept can generally be read using the pattern below ...
A fact that ... is a fact that ...”

is not quite general enough. The definition characterizes the same state of affairs, even when it is not a fact. It could be written:

A state of affairs in which ... is a state of affairs in which ...

In clause 8.3.4, the term 'verb concept wording' is defined as:
"representation of a verb concept by an expression that has a syntactic structure involving a signifier for the verb concept and signifiers for its verb concept roles"

In the same clause, the term 'noun form' is defined as:
"verb concept wording that acts as a noun rather than forming a proposition"

One would expect therefore, that a noun form of a verb concept would be a gerund, such as 'car transfer' for 'branch1 transfers car to branch2', where the 'noun form' denotes the same actualities as the verb concept.

But only the last Example (which is hard to understand because of a particularly bad choice of verb) is said to be about gerunds. The other examples clearly are not. The first Example is: "'transferred car of car transfer' for the verb concept 'car transfer has transferred car'. This form yields a transferred car."

The instances of 'car transfer has transferred car' are actualities of a car being involved in a car transfer. But the cited text says the instances of the 'noun form' 'transferred car of car transfer' are cars, not actualities. Similarly, the interpretation of the other two examples of 'noun forms' correspond to numbers, not actualities.

So the instances of a noun form of a verb concept need not be instances of the verb concept! The noun form therefore cannot be a 'verb concept wording'. The noun form does not represent the verb concept!

It appears that there are two different concepts here. Noun form 1 is "verb concept wording that acts as a noun." That is the gerund in the last Example. In the other examples, the noun form represents a derived concept that is what SBVR calls a 'situational role'. The intent of 'noun form 2' is "representation of a situational role by an expression that has a syntactic structure involving a signifier for the verb concept that the role is derived from and signifiers for some of its verb concept roles".

Finally, use of noun form 2 in declaring a glossary item for a situational role would be preferable to using only the role designation. In particular, the explicit appearance of other role placeholders in the noun form would permit them to be used directly in defining the situational role.

For example:
cardinality
Definition: nonnegative integer that is the number of distinct elements in a given set or collection

could be declared with the noun form:
cardinality of set
Definition: nonnegative integer that is the number of distinct elements in the set