I think you are reading the document too literally.
Yes, I tend to read specifications that way ;^)
You can add this to the issue tracker for RFC 4741 if you want.
I will add all of these items to the issue tracker
Clearly you have figured out that data-model dependent error handling
for the NETCONF protocol is largely undefined in RFC 4741.
This is partly by design, and partly because NETCONF data modeling
is largely undefined.
I don't see this as being dependent on the data-model as I'm only caring
if the target datastore was modified on not