Hi Syd, The description of birth|death is that it "contains information about a person's (birth|death), such as its date and place." Date and place are merely examples of the kinds of content it could contain. Its content is macro.phraseSeq. If we look at the very first example given on the reference page of: http://www.tei-c.org/release/doc/tei-p5-doc/en/html/ref-birth.html it has no dating attributes and only text content. That text content includes a date and a place, neither of which are marked up. My argument is that while it may be _better_ practice to use <birth> as a grouping element for (potentially mixed content) <placeName> and <date> elements it is not necessary, nor possible in some situations. Thus while it can function as a grouping element, <birth> can also function as the primary element which can contain *any* information about the person's birth. The date and place of the birth are just the most common aspects, and thus we exemplify those in the Guidelines because we want to encourage people to think in those terms. And to answer you question about what @ref points to I would say that it points to some definition, detail, identity, or further information concerning that death. That may well be a <place> of death, it may be the cemetery that the person is buried in. I don't believe the TEI should be specifying particularly what it is, just that it gives a definition or identity of this element. I believe all of the following are perfectly valid uses of <birth> which obey the abstract model, some of which would benefit from @ref. <birth>London</birth> <birth>123 Fictitious Road, MadeUp Place, Country</birth> <birth>His mother died in giving birth to him and his twin sister. The sister did not survive.</birth> <birth>In a shed some months before the siege of Jadotville</birth> <birth>In his mother's house</birth> <birth>Bellingham</birth> I would contend that (although I would prefer to see more content and more nested markup as you would suggest) that the first and last of these, at very least, would benefit from a @ref to provide more information. The nature of the information provided would disambiguate these (since I mean London, Ontario; and not the Bellingham near you but the one near the Northumberland National Park). The nature of the type of information is in part provided by the sort of thing that it links to, in the same way that a @ref on a <name> might do. <name ref="#nan123">Nancy</name> it is only by following the reference to the named entity that we find out if I'm talking about a place or a person. (And yes, I'd _prefer_ someone put a @type on that <name> but that isn't always the world we live in.) -James On 20/03/17 13:01, Syd Bauman wrote:

...

Birth and death can be an equivalent of placeName they aren't _necessarily_ anything to do with dates but names of places where these events take place. This they should have all the same attributes of other names. Oh. My first instinct is "I don't buy it". Why on earth would one presume that the content of <birth> or <death> is a place name? Certainly it may *contain* a place name, but that (IMHO) does not give it the right to express canonical information about one bit inside itself. If you wanted to encode canonical information about a place where someone was born, you should (IMHO) stick a <placeName> (or equivalent) in as a child of <birth>.

You might well ask why I think it is OK that <birth> and <death> are members of att.datable. That's because I think the semantics there are absolutely clear, and exemplified at that. The dating information on <death> clearly describes the date of death. But what does @ref on <death> point to? A <place> where the person died, the place where a physician pronounced the person dead, an <event> that caused her death, or the <date> of said event?

And I'm not sure I even know how to ask what @nymRef or @role might mean on a <death> or <birth>. So if we're going to stick with this, I think we need to very explicitly say what the semantics of these attrs are.

BTW, I think the examples in the Guidelines bear this out. Here is first a summary of them, and then the actual elements (whitespace tweaked) in the same order.

empty empty content content content content content children: date name name name name content content children: date name content children: name date empty empty content content children: name content children: name content children: placeName content children: placeName content children: placeName content children: placeName content children: placeName content children: placeName content children: date name --------- <birth notBefore="1368"/>

<death notBefore="1579-08-22" notAfter="1582-03-28"/>

<birth when="1857-03-15">15 March 1857.</birth>

<birth notBefore="1857-03-01" notAfter="1857-04-30">Some time in March or April of 1857.</birth>

<birth>Before 1920, Midlands region.</birth>

<birth>Années 20, dans les Pouilles.</birth>

<birth when="1901-01-16"> Elle est née le<date> 16 janvier 1901</date> à <name type="place">Louvres</name>, alors commune de <name type="place">Seine-et-Oise</name> (aujourd'hui dans le <name type="place">Val-d'Oise</name>), au nord-ouest de l'actuel aéroport de<name type="place"> Roissy</name>. </birth>

<birth>早於1920的上海租界</birth>

<birth when="1960-12-10"><date>1960年12月10日</date>早晨，在一個靠近<name type="place">龍山寺</name>的小平房裡</birth>

<birth when="1960-12-10">In a small cottage near <name type="place">Aix-la-Chapelle</name>, early in the morning of <date>10 Dec 1960</date> </birth>

<death when="1902-10-01"/>

<death when="1902-10-01"/>

<death when="1953-04-07">Ma mère est morte le 7 avril.</death>

<death when="1960-12-10">在<name type="place">北大教堂</name>附近死於腦性麻痺</death>

<death when="1960-12-10">Passed away near <name type="place">Aix-la-Chapelle</name>, after suffering from cerebral palsy. </death>

<birth when="-0044-03-20"> 20 March 43 BC<placeName><settlement type="city">Sulmona</settlement><country key="IT">Italie</country></placeName> </birth>

<death notBefore="0017" notAfter="0018">17 or 18 AD<placeName><settlement type="city">Tomis (Constanta)</settlement><country key="RO">Roumanie</country></placeName> </death>

<birth when="-0044-03-20"> 西元前43年3月20日<placeName><settlement type="city">Sulmona</settlement><country key="IT">義大利</country></placeName> </birth>

<death notBefore="0017" notAfter="0018">西元後17或18年<placeName><settlement type="city">Tomis (Constanta)</settlement><country key="RO">羅馬尼亞</country></placeName> </death>

<birth when="-0044-03-20"> 20 March 43 BC <placeName><settlement type="city">Sulmona</settlement><country key="IT">Italy</country></placeName> </birth>

<death notBefore="0017" notAfter="0018">17 or 18 AD <placeName><settlement type="city">Tomis (Constanta)</settlement><country key="RO">Romania</country></placeName> </death>

<birth when="1950-01-12"> <date>12 Jan 1950</date> <name type="place">Shropshire, UK</name> </birth> ---------

-- Dr James Cummings, James.Cummings@it.ox.ac.uk Academic IT Services, University of Oxford