Conceptual dependency theory
Encyclopedia
Conceptual dependency theory is a model of natural language understanding
used in artificial intelligence
systems.
Roger Schank
at Stanford University
introduced the model in 1969, in the early days of artificial intelligence. This model was extensively used by Schank's students at Yale University
such as Robert Wilensky, Wendy Lehnert, and Janet Kolodner.
Schank developed the model to represent knowledge for natural language input into computers. Partly influenced by the work of Sydney Lamb
, his goal was to make the meaning independent of the words used in the input, i.e. two sentences identical in meaning, would have a single representation. The system was also intended to draw logical inferences.
The model uses the following basic representational tokens:
A set of conceptual transitions then act on this representation, e.g. an ATRANS is used to represent a transfer such as "give" or "take" while a PTRANS is used to act on locations such as "move" or "go". An MTRANS represents mental acts such as "tell", etc.
A sentence such as "john gave a book to Mary" is then represented as the action of an ATRANS on two real world objects John and Mary.
Natural language understanding
Natural language understanding is a subtopic of natural language processing in artificial intelligence that deals with machine reading comprehension....
used in artificial intelligence
Artificial intelligence
Artificial intelligence is the intelligence of machines and the branch of computer science that aims to create it. AI textbooks define the field as "the study and design of intelligent agents" where an intelligent agent is a system that perceives its environment and takes actions that maximize its...
systems.
Roger Schank
Roger Schank
Roger Schank is an American artificial intelligence theorist, cognitive psychologist, learning scientist, educational reformer, and entrepreneur.-Academic career:...
at Stanford University
Stanford University
The Leland Stanford Junior University, commonly referred to as Stanford University or Stanford, is a private research university on an campus located near Palo Alto, California. It is situated in the northwestern Santa Clara Valley on the San Francisco Peninsula, approximately northwest of San...
introduced the model in 1969, in the early days of artificial intelligence. This model was extensively used by Schank's students at Yale University
Yale University
Yale University is a private, Ivy League university located in New Haven, Connecticut, United States. Founded in 1701 in the Colony of Connecticut, the university is the third-oldest institution of higher education in the United States...
such as Robert Wilensky, Wendy Lehnert, and Janet Kolodner.
Schank developed the model to represent knowledge for natural language input into computers. Partly influenced by the work of Sydney Lamb
Sydney Lamb
Sydney MacDonald Lamb is an American linguist and professor at Rice University, whose stratificational grammar is a significant alternative theory to Chomsky's transformational grammar....
, his goal was to make the meaning independent of the words used in the input, i.e. two sentences identical in meaning, would have a single representation. The system was also intended to draw logical inferences.
The model uses the following basic representational tokens:
- real world objects, each with some attributes.
- real world actions, each with attributes
- times
- locations
A set of conceptual transitions then act on this representation, e.g. an ATRANS is used to represent a transfer such as "give" or "take" while a PTRANS is used to act on locations such as "move" or "go". An MTRANS represents mental acts such as "tell", etc.
A sentence such as "john gave a book to Mary" is then represented as the action of an ATRANS on two real world objects John and Mary.