Topic: prosopographical records, ontologies, and links to external authoritiy files

Names refer to (named) entities. Information describing entities in detail can be kept in ontologies in the <profileDesc> of the TEI header (c.f. our session on metadata). They are then linked to by means of @ref attributes on the names.

What can we say about named entities?

Potentially, quite a lot...

<person xml:id="VM1893">
    <persName xml:lang="ru">Владимир Владимирович Маяковский</persName>
    <persName xml:lang="fr">Wladimir Maïakowski</persName>
    <birth when="1893-07-19">7 July (OS) 1893, 
        <placeName ref="#BGDT" xml:lang="en">
            <settlement>Baghdati<settlement>, <country>Georgia<country>
        </placeName>
    </birth>
    <death when="1930-04-14"/>
    <occupation>Poet and playwright</occupation>
    <note>Among the foremost representatives of early-20th century Russian Futurism.</note>
</person>

What elements should the TEI provide for such a purposes?

Traits, states, and events

As elsewhere in the TEI, we resolve this question by adding a layer of abstraction. We distinguish three classes of information:

• <state>: more general-purpose, but usually a time-related property (e.g. occupation for a person, population for a place)
• <trait>: if you want to a distinguish between time-bound and static, use this for properties that (usually) don't change over time (e.g. eye colour for a person, location for a place)
• <event>: an independent event in the real world which may lead to a change in state or trait (e.g. birth for a person, a war for a place)

All these elements are members of the att.datable class and thus can have time/dating attributes.

States

Some typical states for a person

• <occupation>: an informal description of a person's trade, profession or occupation
• <residence>: a person's present or past places of residence
• <affiliation>: an informal description of a person's present or past affiliation with some organization
• <education>: a description of the educational experience of a person
• <floruit> contains information about a person's period of activity

Traits

Some typical traits of a person

• <faith>: faith, belief system, religion etc. of a person
• <langKnowledge>: linguistic knowledge of a person
• <nationality>: nationality (socio-politico status)
• <sex>: sex
• <socecStatus>: socio-economic status

Some typical traits of a place:

• <climate>: describes the climate
• <location>: describes where a place is (see later)
• <population>: describes its population
• <terrain>: describes its terrain

Some of these (e.g. sex) have normalised attributes, but mostly they contain free text descriptions.

Events

For persons, only two specific event elements are defined: <birth> and <death>. Anything else must be defined using the generic <event> element and its @type attribute.

<person xml:id="SS">
    <persName>Siegfried Loraine Sassoon</persName>
    <birth when="1886-09-08">
        <placeName>
            <placeName>Weirleigh Mansion</placeName>
            <settlement>Matfield</settlement>
            <region>Kent</region>
        </placeName>
    </birth>
    <death when="1967-09-01"/>
    <event type="military" when="1914-08-04">
        <desc>In service with Sussex Yeomanry on the day the United Kingdom declared war</desc>
    </event>
    <event type="marriage" when="1933-12">
        <desc>Married Hester Gatty in December 1933</desc>
    </event>
    <event type="separation" when="1945">
        <desc>Seperated from his wife in 1945</desc>
    </event>
</person>

A place as being defined by its location

The <location> element can contain

• a more or less well-structured description using the hierarchy of place name components mentioned earlier (a politico-geographical location)
• a set of geographical co-ordinates

Example:

<place type="neighbourhood" xml:id="ltg000001">
    <placeName xml:lang="ar-Latn-x-ijmes">Bāb al-Jābiyya</placeName>
    <placeName xml:lang="ar">باب الجابية</placeName>
    <settlement xml:lang="ar" type="city">دمشق الشام</settlement>
    <region xml:lang="ota" type="province" notAfter="1918-10-01">ولاية سورية</region>
    <location>
        <geo>33.507628, 36.301395</geo>
    </location>
</place>

Places can self-nest

<place type="state">
    <placeName xml:lang="en">Ottoman Empire</placeName>
    <placeName xml:lang="ar">الدولة العثمانية العالية</placeName>
    <place type="province">
        <placeName notAfter="1918-10-01" xml:lang="ota">ولاية سورية</placeName>
        <place type="city">
            <placeName type="city" xml:lang="ar">دمشق الشام</placeName>
            <place type="neighbourhood">
                <placeName xml:lang="ar-Latn-x-ijmes">Bāb al-Jābiyya</placeName>
                <placeName xml:lang="ar">باب الجابية</placeName>
                <location>
                    <geo>33.507628, 36.301395</geo>
                </location>
            </place>
        </place>
    </place>
</place>

Organizational names

Organizations have names as well. These are any named collection of people regarded as a single unit. An <orgName> can point back to an <org> in the header.

<p>On <date when="1915-10-21">21 October 1915</date> Owen enlisted in the <orgName ref="#AROTC">Artists' Rifles Officers' TrainingCorps</orgName>.</p>

<org xml:id="AROTC">
    <!-- Information about the organization -->
</org>

All entities can be fictional

<place type="imaginary">
    <placeName>Atlantis</placeName>
    <location>
        <offset>fifty leagues beyond</offset>
        <placeName>Pillars of 
            <persName>Hercules</persName></placeName>
    </location>
</place>

Personal relationships

• The <relation> (relationship) element describes any kind of relationship or linkage amongst other entities. We distinguish
  • ‘mutual’ relationships (e.g. sibling) from
  • non-mutual or directed relationships (e.g. parent-of ).
• The following attributes are available:
  • @name: supplies a name for the kind of relationship of which this is an instance
  • @active: identifies the 'active' participants in a non-mutual relationship, or all the participants in a mutual one
  • @mutual: supplies a list of participants amongst all of whom the relationship holds equally
  • @passive: identifies the ‘passive’ participants in a non-mutual relationship

Example

<person xml:id="SLS">
    <persName>Siegfried Loraine Sassoon</persName>
</person>
<person xml:id="HG">
    <persName>Hester Gatty</persName>
</person>
<person xml:id="GS">
    <persName>George Sassoon</persName>
</person>
<!--....-->
<relationGrp type="children">
    <relation active="#SS" name="parent" passive="#GS"/>
    <!--....-->
</relationGrp>

Nyms

The elements <listNym> and <nym> are used to document the canonical form of a name or name-component.

• <nym>
  • Like a dictionary entry, it can contain model.entryParts (e.g. <form>, <orth>, <etym>) and may also include a number of other <nym>s
  • in addition to global attributes and att.typed, it includes the attribute @parts to point to constituent <nym>s
• <listNym> a list of canonical names
• @nymRef has been added to the attribute class att.naming to refer to the canonical name

Example

<nym xml:id="nym-F-737">
    <form xml:lang="ar">شكري</form>
    <form xml:lang="ar-Latn-EN">Shukri</form>
    <form xml:lang="ar-Latn-x-ijmes">Shukrī</form>
    <form xml:lang="tr">Şükrü</form>
</nym>
<nym xml:id="nym-F-406">
    <form xml:lang="ar">يوسف</form>
    <form xml:lang="ar-Latn-EN">Yusef</form>
    <form xml:lang="ar-Latn-FR">Youssouf</form>
    <form xml:lang="ar-Latn-x-ijmes">Yūsuf</form>
    <form xml:lang="de">Josef</form>
    <form xml:lang="en">Joseph</form>
    <form xml:lang="tr">Yusuf</form>
</nym>

Next

Now let's do an exercise where we make an existing <teiHeader> element better by supplying stand-of markup for entities linked to <persName> and <placeName> elements in the text.