Knowledge
Representatio
n
Sukanya Dessai
Slot & Filler Structure
Weak Slot & Filler Strong Slot & Filler
Structure Structure
Semantic Nets Frames Conceptual Dependencies Scripts
Used for implementation of property inheritance along “isa” and
“instance” links.
Property Inheritance
Here, the elements of specific classes inherit attributes and values from
more general classes in which they are included.
instance - class and object relationship
isa - superclass and subclass relationship
Each
node is
called as
a Filler
Attributes
on edges
is called
slot
Attributes = slots values = Filler
Semantic Net
● In semantic nets, information is represented as:
○ Set of nodes connected to each other by a set of labelled arcs.
● Nodes represent: various objects/values of the attributes of object
● Arcs represent: relationships among nodes.
Semantic Net
● Semantic nets are used to find relationships among objects by
spreading activation about from each of two nodes and seeing
where the activation met this process is called intersection search.
● For example: Ram is a boy.
Semantic network by using
Instances
● The semantic network based knowledge representation mechanism
is useful where an object or concept is associated with many
attributes and where relationships between objects are important.
● It is a natural way to represent relationships that would appear as
ground instances of binary predicates in predicate logic.
● In this case we can create one instance of each object. In instance
based semantic net representations some keywords are used like: IS
A, INSTANCE, AGENT, HAS-PARTS etc.
Semantic network by using
Instances
● Consider the following examples:
● Suppose we have to represent the sentence “Sima is a girl”.
Semantic Net
In this network, we could use inheritance to derive the additional info:
has _part(jack, nose)
Semantic Net
Intersection Search
One way to find relationships among objects is to spread the
activation(links) out from two nodes and find out where it meets.
Ex. relation between : Blue and Chicago Royals
*the predicates have to be always binary predicates
Representing Non-binary Predicates
1. Unary -
Man(marcus) can be converted into :
instance(marcus, Man)
2. Other arities- the number of arguments that a function takes
Ex. Score(India, Australia, 4-1)
3 or more place predicates can be converted to binary form as follows:
3. Create new object representing the entire predicate
4. Introduce binary predicates to describe relation to this new object
Give
Event
isa
hosts object
John EV1 book
beneficiary
Mary
Ram is taller than Hari
It can also be represented as
Partitioned Semantic Nets
● Used to represent quantified expression in semantic nets.
● One way to do this is to partition the semantic net into a
hierarchical set of spaces each of which corresponds to the scope of
one or more variable.
● “the dog bit the mail carrier” (partitioning is not required)
● Every dog has bitten a mail carrier.
“Every dog has bitten the Constable”
“Every dog in the town has bitten every Constables”
Frames
● Another kind of weak slot and filler structure.
● Frame is a collection of attributes called as slots and associated values that
describe some entity in the world (filler).
● Frames are general record like structures which consist of a collection of slots
and slot values. The slots may be of any size and type.
● Slots typically have names and values or subfields called facets. Facets may also
have names and any number of values.
● A frame may have any number of slots, a slot may have any number of facets,
each with any number of values.
● A slot contains information such as attribute value pairs, default values,
condition for filling a slot, pointers to other related frames and procedures that
are activated when needed for different purposes.
Frames
● Sometimes a frame describes an entity in some absolute sense,
sometimes it represents the entity from a particular point of view.
● A single frame taken alone is rarely useful. We build frame systems
out of collection of frames that are connected to each other by
virtue of the fact that the value of an attribute of one frame may be
another frame.
● Each frame should start with an open parenthesis and closed with a
closed parenthesis.
Frames
● Meta Class: special class whose elements themselves are classes.
If X is meta class and Y is another class which is an element of X,
then Y inherits all the attributes of X.
● Other ways of representing classes to each other:
○ Mutually Disjoint: two classes are mutually disjoint if they are guaranteed to
have no elements in common.
○ Is covered by: relationship is called ‘covered-by’ when we have a class and it
has set of subclasses, the union of which is equal to the superclass.
Tangled Hierarchies
● Hierarchies that are not trees.
● Usually hierarchy is an arbitrary directed acyclic graph.
● Tangled hierarchies require new property inheritance algorithm.
