Module 3

knowledge representation

Introduction :

Humans are best at understanding, reasoning, and interpreting

knowledge. Human knows things, which is knowledge and as
per their knowledge they perform various actions in the real
world. But how machines do all these things comes under
knowledge representation and reasoning. Hence we can
describe Knowledge representation as following:

o Knowledge representation and reasoning (KR, KRR) is the

part of Artificial intelligence which concerned with AI
agents thinking and how thinking contributes to intelligent
behaviour of agents.
o It is responsible for representing information about the
real world so that a computer can understand and can
utilize this knowledge to solve the complex real world
problems such as diagnosis a medical condition or
communicating with humans in natural language.
o It is also a way which describes how we can represent
knowledge in artificial intelligence. Knowledge
representation is not just storing data into some database,
but it also enables an intelligent machine to learn from
that knowledge and experiences so that it can behave
intelligently like a human.

Knowledge: Knowledge is awareness or familiarity gained by

experiences of facts, data, and situations. Following are the
types of knowledge in artificial intelligence:

Types of knowledge

Following are the various types of knowledge:

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1. Declarative Knowledge:

o Declarative knowledge is to know about something.

o It includes concepts, facts, and objects.
o It is also called descriptive knowledge and expressed in
declarative sentences.
o It is simpler than procedural language.

2. Procedural Knowledge

o It is also known as imperative knowledge.

o Procedural knowledge is a type of knowledge which is
responsible for knowing how to do something.
o It can be directly applied to any task.
o It includes rules, strategies, procedures, agendas, etc.
o Procedural knowledge depends on the task on which it can
be applied.

3. Meta-knowledge:

o Knowledge about the other types of knowledge is called

Meta-knowledge.

4. Heuristic knowledge:

o Heuristic knowledge is representing knowledge of some

experts in a filed or subject.
o Heuristic knowledge is rules of thumb based on previous
experiences, awareness of approaches, and which are
good to work but not guaranteed.
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5. Structural knowledge:

o Structural knowledge is basic knowledge to problem-

solving.
o It describes relationships between various concepts such
as kind of, part of, and grouping of something.
o It describes the relationship that exists between concepts
or objects.

The relation between knowledge and intelligence:

Knowledge of real-worlds plays a vital role in intelligence and

same for creating artificial intelligence. Knowledge plays an
important role in demonstrating intelligent behavior in AI
agents. An agent is only able to accurately act on some input
when he has some knowledge or experience about that input.

Let's suppose if you met some person who is speaking in a

language which you don't know, then how you will able to act
on that. The same thing applies to the intelligent behavior of
the agents.

As we can see in below diagram, there is one decision maker

which act by sensing the environment and using knowledge.
But if the knowledge part will not present then, it cannot
display intelligent behavior.

AI knowledge cycle:

An Artificial intelligence system has the following components

for displaying intelligent behavior:

o Perception
o Learning
o Knowledge Representation and Reasoning
o Planning
o Execution

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The above diagram is showing how an AI system can interact
with the real world and what components help it to show
intelligence. AI system has Perception component by which it
retrieves information from its environment. It can be visual,
audio or another form of sensory input. The learning
component is responsible for learning from data captured by
Perception comportment. In the complete cycle, the main
components are knowledge representation and Reasoning.
These two components are involved in showing the intelligence
in machine-like humans. These two components are
independent with each other but also coupled together. The
planning and execution depend on analysis of Knowledge
representation and reasoning.

Approaches to knowledge representation:

There are mainly four approaches to knowledge representation,

which are givenbelow:

1. Simple relational knowledge:

o It is the simplest way of storing facts which uses the
relational method, and each fact about a set of the object
is set out systematically in columns.
o This approach of knowledge representation is famous in
database systems where the relationship between
different entities is represented.
o This approach has little opportunity for inference.

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Example: The following is the simple relational
knowledge representation.

Player Weight Age

Player1 65 23
Player2 58 18
Player3 75 24

2. Inheritable knowledge:
o In the inheritable knowledge approach, all data must be
stored into a hierarchy of classes.
o All classes should be arranged in a generalized form or a
hierarchal manner.
o In this approach, we apply inheritance property.
o Elements inherit values from other members of a class.
o This approach contains inheritable knowledge which
shows a relation between instance and class, and it is
called instance relation.
o Every individual frame can represent the collection of
attributes and its value.
o In this approach, objects and values are represented in
Boxed nodes.
o We use Arrows which point from objects to their values.

Example:

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3. Inferential knowledge:
o Inferential knowledge approach represents knowledge in
the form of formal logics.
o This approach can be used to derive more facts.
o It guaranteed correctness.
o Example: Let's suppose there are two statements:

a. Marcus is a man
b. All men are mortal
Then it can represent as;

∀x = man (x) ----------> mortal (x)s

man(Marcus)

4. Procedural knowledge:
o Procedural knowledge approach uses small programs and
codes which describes how to do specific things, and how
to proceed.
o In this approach, one important rule is used which is If-
Then rule.
o In this knowledge, we can use various coding languages
such as LISP language and Prolog language.
o We can easily represent heuristic or domain-specific
knowledge using this approach.
o But it is not necessary that we can represent all cases in
this approach.

Knowledge Representation using Semantic network:

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Semantic Network Representation

Semantic networks are alternative of predicate logic for

knowledge representation. In Semantic networks, we can
represent our knowledge in the form of graphical networks.

This network consists of nodes representing objects and arcs

which describe the relationship between those objects.

Semantic networks can categorize the object in different forms

and can also link those objects. Semantic networks are easy to
understand and can be easily extended.

This representation consist of mainly two types of relations:

a. IS-A relation (Inheritance)

b. Kind-of-relation

Example: Following are some statements which we need to

represent in the form of nodes and arcs.

Statements:
a. Jerry is a cat.
b. Jerry is a mammal
c. Jerry is owned by Priya.
d. Jerry is brown colored.
e. All Mammals are animal.

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In the above diagram, we have represented the different type
of knowledge in the form of nodes and arcs. Each object is
connected with another object by some relation.

Drawbacks in Semantic representation:

1. Semantic networks take more computational time at
runtime as we need to traverse the complete network tree
to answer some questions. It might be possible in the
worst case scenario that after traversing the entire tree,
we find that the solution does not exist in this network.
2. Semantic networks try to model human-like memory
(Which has 1015 neurons and links) to store the
information, but in practice, it is not possible to build such
a vast semantic network.
3. These types of representations are inadequate as they do
not have any equivalent quantifier, e.g., for all, for some,
none, etc.
4. Semantic networks do not have any standard definition for
the link names.
5. These networks are not intelligent and depend on the
creator of the system.

Advantages of Semantic network:

1. Semantic networks are a natural representation of
knowledge.
2. Semantic networks convey meaning in a transparent
manner.
3. These networks are simple and easily understandable.

Inheritance in Semantic Net

 Inheritance allows us to specify properties of a superclass and then to
define a subclass, which inherits the properties of the superclass.
 Example: If we say that all mammals give birth to live babies and
we also say that all dogs are mammals and that Tommy is a dog then
we can conclude that Tommy gives birth to live mammals.
In our example, mammals are the superclass of dogs and Tommy. Dogs
are the subclass of mammals and superclass of Tommy.
 Although inheritance is a useful way to express generalization about a
class of objects, in some cases we need to express exceptions to those
generalizations such as “Male animals do not give birth” or “Female

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 dogs below the age of 6 months do not give birth”.
In such cases, we say that the default value has been overridden in the
subclass.

Knowledge Representation Using Frames:

Frame based representation is a development of semantic nets and allow us

to express the idea of inheritance.

A Frame System consists of a set of frames (or nodes), which are

connected together by relations. Each frame describes either an instance or
a class. Each frame has one or more slots, which are assigned slot values.
This is the way in which the frame system is built up. Rather than simply
having links between frames, each relationship is expressed by a value
being placed in a slot. Example:
Frame Name Slot Slot Value
Bob is a Builder
owns Tommy
eats Cheese
Tommy is a dog
chases Bella
Bella is a Cat
chases Mice
Mice eat cheese
Cheese
Builder
Dog
Cat

We can also represent this frame system in a diagrammatic form such a

below:

Bob Tommy
is aBuilder
dog
is a
owns Tommy
Bella
cheese chases
eats

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 When we say, “Tommy is a dog” we really mean, “Tommy is an instance
of the class dog” or “Tommy is a member of the class dogs”.

Why are Frames useful?

The main advantage of using frame-based systems for expert systems is
that all information about a particular object is stored in one place.

Inheritance in Frames:
Example: 1

We might extend our frame system with the following additional

information:

Dogs chase cats

Cats chase mice
Now, we do not need to state explicitly that Tommy chases Bella or that
Tommy chases mice. We can inherit this information because Bella is an
instance of the class cats, and Tommy is an instance of class dogs.

Example 2:

Mammals
breathe Dogs
are mammals
Cats are
mammals
Here we have created superclass mammals, of which dogs and cats are
subclasses. Hence, we do not need to explicitly say that cats and dogs
breathe because we can inherit this information. Similarly we do not need
to express explicitly that Tommy and Bella breathe as they are instances of
the class dogs and cats and therefore they inherit from those classes
(superclasses).
Example 3:
Let‟s take a fact:

Mammals have four legs

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 Now, this is not true as humans do not have four legs.
Or let‟s say Tommy has an unfortunate accident and now has only three
legs. This information might be expressed as:

Frame Name Slot Slot Value

Mammals *no. of legs four
Dog subclass mammal
Cat subclass mammal
Tommy is a dog
number of legs three
Bella is a cat

We have used an asterisk (*) to indicate that the value for the “number of
legs” slot for the mammal class is a default value and can be overridden.

Slots as Frames:
 It is also possible to express a range of values that a slot can take. Ex,
the no. of legs slot might be allowed a number between 1 & 4.
 Or we can express this restriction by allowing slots to be frames. The
no. of legs slot can be represented as a frame such as.

Frame Name Slot Slot Value

No. of legs Minimum value 1
Maximum value 4

Conceptual Dependency (CD)

This representation is used in natural language processing in order to represent them earning
of the sentences in such a way that inference we can be made from the sentences. It is
independent of the language in which the sentences were originally stated. CD representations
of a sentence is built out of primitives , which are not words belonging to the language but are
conceptual , these primitives are combined to form the meanings of the words.
As an example, consider the event represented by the sentence.

In the above representation the symbols have the following meaning:

Arrows indicate direction of dependency

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Double arrow indicates two may link between actor and the action

P indicates past tense

ATRANS is one of the primitive acts used by the theory . it indicates transfer of possession

0 indicates the object case relation

R indicates the recipient case relation

Conceptual dependency provides a structure in which knowledge can be represented and also a set
of building blocks from which representations can be built. A typical set of primitive actions are

Primitive Actions:
ATRANS - Transfer of an abstract relationship(Eg: give)

PTRANS - Transfer of the physical location of an object(Eg: go)

PROPEL - Application of physical force to an object (Eg: push)

MOVE - Movement of a body part by its owner (eg : kick)

GRASP - Grasping of an object by an actor(Eg: throw)

INGEST - Ingesting of an object by an animal (Eg: eat)

EXPEL - Expulsion of something from the body of an animal (cry)

MTRANS - Transfer of mental information(Eg: tell)

MBUILD - Building new information out of old(Eg: decide)

SPEAK - Production of sounds (Eg: say)

ATTEND - Focusing of sense organ toward a stimulus (Eg: listen)

A second set of building block is the set of allowable dependencies among the conceptualization
describe in a sentence.

Conceptual Category:
Six primitive conceptual categories provide building blocks which are the set of
allowable dependencies in the concepts in a sentence:

PP-- Real world objects.

ACT-- Real world actions.
PA-- Attributes of objects.
AA-- Attributes of actions.
T-- Times.
LOC-- Locations.

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Conceptual relations at a higher level, indicate dependencies between conceptualizations,
annotated with conceptual tenses such as past, future, and conditional. Other types of conceptual
relation are the time and location of a conceptualization.
P- past
f- future
t- transition
ts- state transition
tf- Finished transition
k- continuing
c- Conditional
Rules of Conceptual Dependency:

Rule-1: It describes the relationship between an actor and the event he

or she causes.

Rule-2: It describes the relationship between PP and PA that are asserted

to describe it.

Rule-3: It describes the relationship between two PPs, one of which

belongs to the set defined by the other.

Rule-4: It describes the relationship between a PP and an attribute that

has already been predicated on it.

Rule-5: It describes the relationship between two PPs one of which

provides a particular kind of information about the other.

Rule-6: It describes the relationship between an ACT and the PP that is

the object of that ACT.

Rule-7: It describes the relationship between an ACT and the source and
the recipient of the ACT.

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Rule-8: It describes the relationship between an ACT and the instrument
with which it is performed. This instrument must always be a full
conceptualization, not just a single physical object.

Rule-9: It describes the relationship between an ACT and its physical

source and destination.

Rule-10: It represents the relationship between a PP and a state in which

it started and another in which it ended.

Rule-11: It represents the relationship between one conceptualization

and another that causes it.

Rule-12: It represents the relationship between conceptualization and the

time at which the event occurred described.

Rule-13: It describes the relationship between one conceptualization and

another, that is the time of the first.

Rule-14: It describes the relationship between conceptualization and the

place at which it occurred.

Generation of CD Representation:
The following table shows CD representation of English Sentences having simple but deep
intended meanings.

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Conceptual parsing:
Conceptual parsing is required for generating CD representation from source sentences in
natural language. The main steps involved in CD parsing are as follows:
Syntactic processor extracts main verb and noun along with syntactic category of the verb
from the sentence.
Conceptual processor then makes use of verb-ACT dictionary. Once the correct
entry from dictionary is chosen.
CD processor analyses the rest of the sentence looking for arguments for empty
slots of the verb. CD processor examines possible interpretation in a well-defined order.
Let us consider following cases to handle ‘with PP’ phrase and formulate strategies
to disambiguate the meanings.
CASE 1: The sentences having ‘with PP’ phrase with non-animate PP in one sentence and
animate PP in another sentence as given in the following sentences.
1. John broke the door with hammer – Type1
2. John broke the door with Mike – Type2
. Rule 1: If PP in ‘with PP’ with phrase is non-animate and CD Act requires
instrument then the sentence is of Type1, where PP (hammer)
. Rule 2: IF PP in ‘with PP’ phrase is animate and CD Act requires instrument
then the sentence is of Type2, where PP(Mike) is resolved as a co-actor.

Case 2: In the sentences having ‘with PP’ phrase, if PP’s in both the sentences are non –
animate, then they have to be resolved using semantic lexicon. Consider the following
examples
1. John went to gardens with flowers – Type 3
2. John went to gardens with bag – Type 4
In Type3, non-animate noun ‘flowers’ is a part of a garden. Whereas in Type4, non-animate
‘bag’ is some object not related to garden. Such association of word senses could be found

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in WordNet and then disambiguation is possible. Here noun ‘bag’ is treated as possession by
john.

Case 3: In the sentences having ‘with PP’ phrase. If PPs in the sentences are animate, then
they have to be resolved using semantic lexicon and context.
Consider the following example:
1. John went to the garden with Mike – Type5
2. John went to the garden with butterflies – Type6
3. John went to the garden with dog – Type7
In these sentences, Mike, butterflies and dog are animate PPs and can be resolved as
follows:
 Mike is easily resolved to co-actor of John as both are humans and have similar
characteristics.
 WordNet can be used to check if butterfly and garden has some common sense.
 Dog is still ambiguous as it may be treated as possession of actor or may be a part of
garden as animals many wonder in garden. Such sentences can be further resolved by
considering the context of sentences.

We can use semantic lexicon dictionary to resolve some of the ambiguities. WordNet is a
semantic lexicon for the English language. It groups English words into sets of synonyms
called synsets. The purpose is WordNet is to produce a combination of dictionary and
thesaurus.

Script structure:
A script is a structured representation describing a stereotyped sequence of events in a
particular context.
Scripts are used in natural language understanding systems to organize a knowledge
base in terms of the situations that the system should understand. Scripts use a frame-
like structure to represent the commonly occurring experience like going to the movies
eating in a restaurant, shopping in a supermarket, or visiting an ophthalmologist.
Thus, a script is a structure that prescribes a set of circumstances that could be
expected to follow on from one another.
Scripts are beneficial because:
 r in known runs or patterns.


exists which allows an event to take place.

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  Prerequisites exist upon events taking place.

Components of a script
The components of a script include:
 Entry condition: These are basic condition which must be fulfilled before events
in

the script can occur.

 Results: Condition that will be true after events in script occurred.
 Props: Slots representing objects involved in events
 Roles: These are the actions that the individual participants perform.
 Track: Variations on the script. Different tracks may share components of the
same scripts.
 Scenes: The sequence of events that occur.
Describing a script, special symbols of actions are used. These are:
Symbol Meaning Example
ATRANS transfer a relationship give
PTRANS transfer physical location of an objectgo
PROPEL apply physical force to an object push
MOVE move body part by owner kick
GRASP grab an object by an actor hold
INGEST taking an object by an animal eat drink
EXPEL expel from animal’s body cry
MTRANS transfer mental information tell
MBUILD mentally make new information decide
CONC conceptualize or think about an idea think
SPEAK produce sound say
ATTEND focus sense organ listen
Example:-Script for going to the bank to withdraw money.
SCRIPT : Withdraw money
TRACK : Bank
PROPS : Money Counter
Form Token

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Roles : P= Customer
E= Employee
C= Cashier
Entry conditions: P has no or less money.
The bank is open.
Results : P has more money.
Scene 1: Entering
P PTRANS P into the Bank
P ATTEND eyes to E
P MOVE P to E
Scene 2: Filling form
P MTRANS signal to E
E ATRANS form to P
P PROPEL form for writing
P ATRANS form to P
E ATRANS form to P
Scene 3: Withdrawing money
P ATTEND eyes to counter
P PTRANS P to queue at the counter
P PTRANS token to C
C ATRANS money to P
Scene 4: Exiting the bank
P PTRANS P to out of bank

CYC THEORY:

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  The CYC thery designed for describing the world knowledge(commonsense
knowledge) to be useful in AI applications and more specifically in natural language
understanding similar to CD theory.
 CYC conceived by Lenat and Guha for capturing commonsense knowledge form the
project to capture a large knowledge from 100 randomly selected articles in teh
Encyclopedia Britannica . CYC name came from this project.
 The CYC structure contains representations of events, objects, attitudes, space ,time ,
motion etc.
 So CYC is particularly concerned with the issues of scale. But the question is that
why we build such large knowledge bases KBs are as follows:

Brittleness:
Specialized knowledge bases are little. It is hard to encode new situations and there is
degradation in the performance.
Form and Content:
Knowledge representation so far seen may not be sufficient for AI applications where main
focus is comprehension. Commences strategies could point out where difficulties in content
may affect the form and temporarily focus on content of KBs rather than on their form.
Shared Knowledge:
Small knowledge Base system should allow greater communication amoung themselves.

It is a huge task to build such a large KB. Initially the approach taken by CYC was to encoded
10 million of facts that make commonsense knowledge and then make itself a learning
system.
CYCL contains a constraint language that allows the expression of arbitrary first-order logical
expressions.

CASE GRAMMARS:
Fillmore Grammar is also called as case grammar. Case grammar provides
a different approach to the problem of how syntactic and semantic
interpolation can be combined. Grammar rules are written to describe
syntactic rather than semantic regularities. But the structures, and rules
that are produced correspond to semantic relations rather than to strictly
syntactic ones.

Characteristics of Fillmore Case Grammar:

i. Agent: Investigation of the action.
ii. Instrument: Cause of the event.
iii. Dative: Entity affected by the action.
iv. Factitive: Object.
v. Locative: Place of the event.
vi. Source: Place from which something moves.

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 The ultimate goal of case grammar theory was to
extract deep meanings of the sentences and express in the form of cases
mentioned above.
For example, in the sentences, the door was broken by john
with hammer, using hammer john broke the door, john broke th door with
the hammer, the hammer(instruement), the john(actor) and the
door(object) play the same semantic roles in each of these sentences
An example of syntactically same but semantically different sentences is
as follows:
Eg: Mother baked for one hour and Cake baked for one hour will have
same syntactic parse structure (NP VP PP) but case grammer analysis of
these sentence will show the difference.

Questions Associated with Cases

Case  Question
Action  What was the event
Agent  Who did the event
Objective  What was involved in the event
Beneficiary  Whom was it done/Sho was
beneficiary
Time  When was the event done
Location  Where was the event done

Let us generate case frame for a semtence using case structure. The case frame for
john gave an apple to Mike in the kitchen or Mike was given an apple by john in the kitchen
is coded as sollows in the table

Sample Case Frame

Case Frame
Cases Values
Action Give
Agent John
Objective Apple
Beneficiary Mike
Time Past
Location Kitchen

SEMANTIC WEB:
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 Semantic Web is an extension to the World Wide Web. The purpose of the semantic
web is to provide structure to the web and data in general. It emphasizes on
representing a web of data instead of web of documents. It allows computers to
intelligently search, combine and process the web content based on the meaning
that the content has. Three main models of the semantic web are:

1.Building models
2. Computing with Knowledge
3. Exchanging Informationp

Building Models:
Model is a simplified version or description of certain aspects of the real-time
entities. Model gathers information which is useful for the understanding of the
particular domain.
Computing Knowledge:
Conclusions can be obtained from the knowledge present.
Example: If two sentences are given as ‘John is the son of Harry’ and another
sentence given is- ‘Hary’s father is Joey’, then the knowledge that can be computed
from it is – ‘John is the grandson of Joey’
Similarly, another example useful in the understanding of computing knowledge is-
‘All A is B’ and ‘All B is C’, then the conclusion that can be drawn from it is – ‘All A are
C’ respectively.
Exchanging Information:
It is an important aspect. Various communication protocols have been implemented
for the exchange of information like the TCP/IP, HTML, WWW. Web Services have
also been used for the exchange of the data.
The technologies associated with the semantic web are:
RDF (Resource Description Framework)
OWL (Web Ontology Language)
DL (Description Language)
The query language used is:
SPARQL ( SPARQL Protocol and RDF query language).
SHACL (Shape Constraint Language). SHACL is used for validating the RDF graphs
against a set of conditions.
RDF:
It is the formal language for describing structured information. The primary goal of
RDF is to exchange data on the web while preserving the original meaning of the
data. It is a data model that is used to describe resources.
For Example Physical Things, Abstract Concepts, Numbers and Strings.
RDF allows the processing of information. RDF representation can be in the form of
triples and graphs. RDF graph is a directed graph which is used to serve as a
description language for data on the world wide web and other electronic networks.
Resources are described using triples.

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Triples capture the relationship between the subject and the object. Triples have a
subject, predicate and an object. Triples are enclosed within angular brackets.
Example: Delhi is capital of India
The triple generated from this sentence is:
<Delhi> <capital of> <India>.
, where Delhi is the subject, capital of is the predicate and India is the object.
The triples can also be represented in the form of URIs (Uniform Resource Identifier).
Example of URI triple:

<http://www.abc.org/subject/Delhi>

<http://www.abc.org/predicate/capitalOf>

<http://www.abc.org/object/India>.

Every statement is terminated by a full-stop in RDF triple.

MODULE-3- Knowledge Representation and Techniques

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S.NO QUESTION CO BL MARKS

1 What are the different approaches to knowledge 3 2 12

representation?
2 Explain in detail about knowledge representation using 3 2 12
semantic network
3 Describe about inference rules 3 2 12
4 Explain inferencing methods with an example. 3 2 12
5 Describe in detail about inheritance in Knowledge 3 2 12
Representation.
6 How the knowledge is represented using frames. 3 2 12
7 (a) Describe about the conceptual primitive actions 3 2 6
(b) Explain conceptual category in conceptual dependency 6
theory.
8 What are the rules for conceptualization blocks in 3 2 12
conceptual dependency?
9 (a) Explain in detail about Generation of Conceptual 3 2 6
dependency representation 6
(b) What is conceptual parsing.
10 Describe about script structure in Knowledge 3 2 12
Representation
11 Explain in detail about CYC theory 3 2 12
12 Illustrate the concept of case grammars 3 2 12
13 Describe about semantic web in Knowledge 3 2 12
Representation.

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