On 6/6/06, Roger Luethi collector@hellgate.ch wrote:
Significant? Salient? You don't want to go there.
I'd argue the most significant thing about the Titanic is "major disaster" ("Shipwrecks in the Atlantic Ocean", actually). It's not significant or salient for being a ship, but for taking 1500 people down.
But at the end of the day, it's a ship. Indisputably so. You would certainly want to put an attribute "shipwrecked" on it, and possible "shipwrecked in 1903" or whatever. Instead of "significant" and "salient" how about "concrete"? The fact that it's a ship is concrete and essential. The fact that it shipwrecked is ancillary.
(why do I feel like I'm getting talked into trying to reinvent the field of semantics from scratch)
And what is more salient about Halle Berry, being a women (or actress, for all I care) _or_ having won a "Worst Actress Razzie"? Well?
I didn't know she had. Woman.
I'm afraid your "I know it when it see it" approach to identifying taxonomic categories is hopelessly POV.
Not many people are going to deny that Halle is a women, or that Titanic was a ship.
Hardly. For starters, many people have held several jobs in their life. Halle Berry is also a model. Albert Einstein was also a Patent Clerk. Duke Ellington was a composer, bandleader, and pianist. Etc. pp.
Halle Berry is primarily an actress. Einstein was primarily a physicist. Ellington was primarily a jazz musician. But I see your point, maybe the taxonomies should stop at "person", and the rest can be attributes.
Steve