Lecture four:

Semantic net and

conceptual graphs.

Artificial
Intelligence
By: Dr. Zied O. Ahmed
 Lecture Five: Network representation ………………………….……. By: Zied O. Ahmed

Lecture five: Network

representation: Semantic net and
conceptual graphs.

5.1 Introduction
Network representations have almost as long a history as logic. The Greek
philosopher Porphyry created tree-based type hierarchies - with their roots at the top
- to describe Aristotle’s categories
The history of the development of semantic networks is well known. Both Sowa
and Lehmann have expounded in excellent scholarly fashion as to their origins in
the study of language. Their later development as a tool for representing knowledge
is also well known, as is their role in building computerized inference systems.
Indeed, the three aspects of intelligent thought, logic and language, will never be far
from our discussion. From all these sources we learn that semantic networks have
three main attributes:
1. they originate in the conceptual analysis of language
2. they have equivalent expressiveness to first-order logic
3. they can support inference through an interpreter that manipulates internal
representations

5.2 Semantic Nets

Semantic networks are an alternative to predicate logic as a form of knowledge
representation. The idea is that we can store our knowledge in the form of a graph,
with nodes representing objects in the world, and arcs representing relationships
between those objects.
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 Lecture Five: Network representation ………………………….……. By: Zied O. Ahmed

A semantic network involves three aspects:

1. a way of thinking about knowledge in which there are concepts and
relationships among them.
2. a diagrammatic representation comprising some combination of boxes, arrows
and labels.
3. a computer representation that allows database-like activity and sound
inferencing using algorithms that operate on these representations
The relation R between two nodes, labelled A and B, has the property to link
these nodes: R(A,B). The arcs of the graph represent the relations (usually binary)
between the concepts. The nodes and the arcs are labelled. Example:

5.3 Types of links in the networks

1. Epistemic links
2. Logical links
3. Conceptual links
4. Links specific to the domain

1- Epistemic links
kind-of: Between the general concept and the concept which is more general.
Mechanism of classification and categorization

is-a (instance-of): Between the individual concept and the general concept
Mechanism of identification and of recognition. Membership, belonging
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 Lecture Five: Network representation ………………………….……. By: Zied O. Ahmed

Example:

2- Logical links
logical connectors: negation, and, or.
Modalities: it is possible that, it is necessary that, think/believe that, it is allowed
that

3- Conceptual links
Inspired by the Fillmore's case grammar. Identification of general relations.
General links
agent (of the action)
object (of the action)
receiver (of the action)
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 Lecture Five: Network representation ………………………….……. By: Zied O. Ahmed

4- Links specific to the domain

Interoperability between computer systems. Terminologies and ontologies as
shared conceptual representations.
Example: the UMLS (Unified Medical Language System -
http://www.nlm.nih.gov/research/umls/)

Example:
Tom is a cat.
Tom caught a bird.
Tom is owned by John.
Tom is ginger in colour.
Cats like cream.
The cat sat on the mat.
A cat is a mammal.
A bird is an animal.
All mammals are animals.
Mammals have fur.
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 Lecture Five: Network representation ………………………….……. By: Zied O. Ahmed

There is, however, some confusion here which stems from the imprecise nature
of semantic nets. A particular problem is that we haven’t distinguished between
nodes representing classes of things, and nodes representing individual objects. So,
for example, the node labelled Cat represents both the single (nameless) cat who sat
on the mat, and the whole class of cats to which Tom belongs, which are mammals
and which like cream.
The is_a link has two different meanings – it can mean that one object is an
individual item from a class, for example Tom is a member of the class of cats, or
that one class is a subset of another, for example, the class of cats is a subset of the
class of mammals. This confusion does not occur in logic, where the use of
quantifiers, names and predicates makes it clear what we mean so:
Tom is a cat is represented by Cat(Tom)
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The cat sat on the mat is represented by ∃x∃y(Cat(x) ∧ Mat(y) ∧ SatOn(x,y))

 Lecture Five: Network representation ………………………….……. By: Zied O. Ahmed

A cat is a mammal is represented by ∀x(Cat(X) →Mammal(x))

We can clean up the representation by distinguishing between nodes representing
individual or instances, and nodes representing classes.
The is_a link will only be used to show an individual belonging to a class.
The link representing one class being a subset of another will be labelled
a_kind_of, or ako for short.
Note also the modification which causes the link labelled is_owned_by to be
reversed in direction. This is in order to avoid links representing passive
relationships. In general, a passive sentence can be replaced by an active one, so
“Tom is owned by John” becomes “John owns Tom”.
The revised semantic net is:
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 Lecture Five: Network representation ………………………….……. By: Zied O. Ahmed

5.4 The Case for Case

We have shown how binary relationships may be represented by arcs in graphs,
but what about relationships with more than two arguments? For example, what
about representing the sentence “John gave the book to Mary”? In predicate logic,
we could have a 3-ary predicate gave, gave(John,Book1,Mary).
The way this can be resolved is to consider the act of giving a separate object.
We can than say that any particular act of giving has three participants: the donor,
the recipient, and the gift, so the semantic net representing the sentence is:

Example:
Car is a Vehicle,
Bicycle is a Vehicle,
Truck has Wheels,
Truck can transport Bicycle
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 Lecture Five: Network representation ………………………….……. By: Zied O. Ahmed

5.5 Conceptual Graphs

A conceptual graph is a finite, connected, bipartite graph. The nodes of the graph
are either concepts or conceptual relations.
Conceptual graphs do not use labeled arcs; instead, the conceptual relation nodes
represent relations between concepts. Because conceptual graphs are bipartite,
concepts only have arcs to relations, and vice versa.

dog and brown are concept nodes and color a conceptual relation. To distinguish
these types of nodes, we represent concepts as boxes and conceptual relations as
ellipses.
In conceptual graphs, concept nodes represent either concrete or abstract objects
in the world of discourse.
Concrete concepts, such as a cat, telephone, or restaurant, are characterized by
our ability to form an image of them in our minds. Note that concrete concepts
include generic concepts such as cat or restaurant along with concepts of specific
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cats and restaurants. We can still form an image of a generic cat.

 Lecture Five: Network representation ………………………….……. By: Zied O. Ahmed

Abstract concepts include things such as love, beauty, and loyalty that do not
correspond to images in our minds.
Conceptual relation nodes indicate a relation involving one or more concepts.
One advantage of formulating conceptual graphs as bipartite graphs rather than using
labeled arcs is that it simplifies the representation of relations of any arity. A relation
of arity n is represented by a conceptual relation node having n arcs.
represents the proposition “A dog has a color of brown”

represents the sentence “Mary gave John the book”.

This graph uses conceptual relations to represent the cases of the verb “to give
” and indicates the way in which conceptual graphs are used to model the semantics
of natural language.

5.6 Types, Individuals, and Names

In conceptual graphs, every concept is a unique individual of a particular type.
Each concept box is labeled with a type label, which indicates the class or type of
individual represented by that node. Thus, a node labeled dog represents some
individual of that type.
Types are organized into a hierarchy. The type dog is a subtype of carnivore,
which is a subtype of mammal, etc.
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 Lecture Five: Network representation ………………………….……. By: Zied O. Ahmed

Boxes with the same type label represent concepts of the same type; however,
these boxes may or may not represent the same individual concept.
Each concept box is labeled with the names of the type and the individual. The
type and individual labels are separated by a colon, “:”.

This graph indicates that the dog “Emma” is brown.

This graph asserts that some unspecified entity of type dog has a color of brown.
If the individual is not indicated, the concept represents an unspecified individual of
that type.
A unique token called a marker indicates each individual in the world of
discourse. This marker is written as a number preceded by a #.
Markers are different from names in that they are unique: individuals may have
one name, many names, or no name at all, but they have exactly one marker.
Similarly, different individuals may have the same name but may not have the
same marker. This distinction gives us a basis for dealing with the semantic
ambiguities that arise when we give objects names.

This graph asserts that a particular dog, #1352, is brown.

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 Lecture Five: Network representation ………………………….……. By: Zied O. Ahmed

Markers allow us to separate an individual from its name. If dog #1352 is named
“Emma,” we can use a conceptual relation called name to add this to the graph.

The name is enclosed in double quotes to indicate that it is a string.

Conceptual graph of a person with three names. This graph represents the
situation described in the song lyric: “Her name was McGill, and she called herself
Lil, but everyone knew her as Nancy”
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 Lecture Five: Network representation ………………………….……. By: Zied O. Ahmed

This graph represents the assertion “The dog scratches its ear with its paw”.
Although we do not know which dog is scratching its ear, the variable *X indicates
that the paw and the ear belong to the same dog that is doing the scratching.

Examples:
1. A cat is on a mat.
Concepts are represented by rectangles: the concept [Cat] represents a instance
of a cat, and [Mat] represents an instance of a mat.
Conceptual relations are represented by circles or ovals: the conceptual relation
(On) relates a cat to a mat.
The arcs that link the relations to the concepts are represented by arrows: the first
arc has an arrow pointing toward the relation, and the second arc has an arrow
pointing away from the relation. If a relation has more than two arcs, the arcs are
numbered.
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 Lecture Five: Network representation ………………………….……. By: Zied O. Ahmed

2. Every cat is on a mat.

The default quantifier in a concept is the existential ∃, which is normally
represented by a blank. The concept [Cat] without anything in the referent field is
logically equivalent to the concept [Cat: ∃], which asserts the proposition that there
exists a cat.
Other quantifiers, such as the universal ∀, are called defined quantifiers because
they can be defined in terms of conceptual graphs containing only the default
existential.

the concept [Cat: ∀] represents the phrase every cat, and the complete CG
represents the sentence Every cat is on a mat.

3. John is going to Boston by bus.

Conceptual graph with four concepts: [Go], [Person: John], [City: Boston], and
[Bus].
It has three conceptual relations: (Agnt) relates [Go] to the agent John, (Dest)
relates [Go] to the destination Boston, and (Inst) relates [Go] to the instrument bus.
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 Lecture Five: Network representation ………………………….……. By: Zied O. Ahmed

4. A person is between a rock and a hard place.

The between relation (Betw) is a triadic relation, whose first two arcs are linked
to concepts of entities that occur on either side of the entity represented by the
concept linked to the third arc.
For a conceptual relation with n arcs, the first n-1 arcs have arrows that point
toward the circle, and the n-th or last arc points away.

Exercises:
1. Translate each of the following sentences into conceptual graphs:
a.“Jane gave Tom an ice cream cone.”

b.“Basketball players are tall.”

c.“Paul cut down the tree with an axe.”

d.“Place all the ingredients in a bowl and mix thoroughly.”

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