WEAK SLOT -AND FILLER -

STRUCTURES
 Inheritable knowledge
• The relational knowledge base determines a set of
attributes and associated values that together
describe the objects of knowledge base.
Player Height Weight Bats_throws
John 6.1 180 Right_throws
Sam 5.10 170 right_right
Jack 6.2 215 Bats_throws

E.g. Player_info(“john”,”6.1”,180,right_throws)
• The knowledge about the objects, their attributes and
their values need not be as simple as shown.

• One of the most powerful form of inference

mechanisms is property inheritance.
• Property Inheritance
• Here elements of specific classes inherit attributes
and values from more general classes in which
they are included.

• In order to support property inheritance objects

must be organized into classes and classes must be
arranged in generalization hierarchy.
Here,
Lines ==attributes and boxed nodes== object/values of attriibutes of an
objjectt.. person(Owen)  instance(Owen, Person)
Mammal team(Owen, Liverpool)

isa

hhaass--
PPeerrsso Nose
ppaarrtt
o nn

instanc
e
unifor
m tea
colour m
Red Owen Liverpool

This structure is also called as slot and filler structure. These structures are
the devices to support property inheritance along isa and instance links.
• Advantage of slot and filler structures:
1. monotonic reasoning can be performed more
effectively than with pure logic and non monotonic
reasoning is easily supported.

2. Makes it easy to describe properties of relations.

e.g. “does Owen has-part called nose?”

3. Form of object oriented programming and has

advantages such as modularity and ease of viewing
by people.
 Slot and filler structures

Weak slot and filler structure Strong slot and filler structure

Semantic nets Frames Conceptual Dependency Scripts

Weak slot and filler structures: are “Knowledge- Poor”

or “weak” as very little importance is given to the specific
knowledge the structure should contain.

Attribute= slot and its value= filler

 Semantic nets
• 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.
Mammal

isa
has-part
Person Nose

uniform instance
color team
Blue Jack Chicago Royals
• In this network we could use inheritance to derive
the additional info:
has_part(jack, nose)

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 : Mammal
Red and liverpool isa
has-part
Person Nose

uniform instance
color team
Red Owen Liverpool
• Representing non binary predicates:
1. Unary –
e.x. Man(marcus) can be converted into:
instance(marcus,Man)
2. Other arities-
e.x. Score(india,australia,4-1)
3 or more place predicates can be converted to binary
form as follows:
1. Create new object representing the entire
predicate.
2. Introduce binary predicates to describe relation to
this new object.
Score(india,australia,4-1)

Game

isa
Visiting _team Score
Australia TEST4 4-1

Home _team

India
Ex. 2. “john gave the book to
Mary” give(john,mary,book)

Give Book

instance instance

agent Object
John EV 1 BK1

beneficiary

Mary
 Making some important distinctions
1. “john has height 72”
height
John 72

2. “john is taller than Bill”

John Bill

height height

greater_than
H1 H2

Value

72
 Partitioned semantic nets
• Used to represent quantified expressions 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 not required]
Dogs Bite Mail-Carrier

isa isa isa

assailant victim
d b m
• “every dog has bitten a mail carrier”
x: dog (x) y: mail-carrier(y)  bite(x, y)
• How to represent universal quantifiers?
– Let node ‘g’ stands for assertion given above
– This node is an instance of a special class ‘GS’ of
general statements about the world.
– Every element in ‘GS’ has 2 attributes:-
• Form - states relation that is being asserted.
•  connections - one or more, one for each of the
universally quantified variables.
– ‘SA’ is the space of partitioned sementic net.
• “every dog has bitten a mail carrier”

SA

GS Dogs Bite Mail-Carrier

S1
isa
form

isa isa isa

g d b m
 assailant victim
• “Every dog in the town has bitten the constable”

Dogs Bite Constables SA

GS

S1
isa isa isa isa

form
g d b m
victim
 assailant
• “Every dog in the town has bitten every constable”

Dogs Bite Constables SA

S1
isa isa isa

d b c
victim
assailant

form  
isa
GS g
• More examples of sementic nets:
• “ Mary gave the green flowered vase to her
favourite cousin”
Give

instance

agent Object
Mary EV 1 vase

Colour_pattern
beneficiary

Green
cousin
flowered
favourite
• “every batsman hits a ball”

SA

GS Batsman Hits Balls

S1
isa
form

isa isa isa

g b h b
 action Acts_on
• “Tweety is a kind of bird who can fly. It is Yellow
in colour and has wings.”
colour
has-part
yellow Bird Wings

action instance

fly Tweety
• Represent following using sementic nets:-
Tom is a cat. Tom caught a bird. Tom is owned by John. Tom is
ginger in color. Cats like cream.The cat sat on the mat. Acat is
a mammal. Abird is an animal. All mammals are
animals.mammals have fur.
 Frames
• Another kind of week slot and filler structure.
• Frame is a collection of attributes called as slots
and associated values that describe some entity in
the world (filler).
• Consider Room No 2

,
Location Room instance
legs
isa Chair 4

Hotel room
isa height
20-40 cms
contains contains

Hotel bed Hotel Chair

use
Sitting_on
Hotel Room
isa : Room
contains: Hotel Bed Frame structure for Hotel Room
contains: Hotel Chair

Hotel Chair
isa: Chair Frame structure for Hotel Chair
use: sitting_on
location: Hotel Room

....
...... Frame structure for all remaining
attributes
....
......
....
Frame System for Hotel Room
Perso Jack_Roberts
n isa: Mammal instance:
cardinality: Fielder height:
6,000,000,000 Individual
5-10 balls: right
frame
* Handed: right batting_avg:
0.309
Adult Male team: Chicago
isa: Person cubs
Cardinality: uniform_color:
isa:
2,000,000,000 blue
ML_Baseball_Player
* Height: 5- 10 cardinality: 376
batting_avg: 0.262
ML_Baseball_Player Fielder
isa: ML_Baseball_Team
Adult_Male isa: Team
cardinality: cardinality:
624 26
* height: 6-1 team_size: 24
* bats: equal to manager:
• 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 relating classes to each other

1. Mutually disjoint: 2 classes are mutually disjoint if they
are guaranteed to have no elements in common.
2. Is covered by: relationship is called as ‘covered-by’ when we
have a class and it has set of subclasses, the union of which is equal
to the superclass.
ML_Baseball_Player

isa isa isa isa isa

American National
Fielder Pitcher Catcher
Leaguer
Leaguer
instance instance
Jack
ML_Baseball_Player
is covered-by: { Pitcher, Catcher, Fielder,American leaguer, National leaguer}

Pitcher
isa: ML_Baseball_Player mutually_disjoint-
with: {Catcher, Fielder }

Catcher
isa: ML_Baseball_Player
mutually_disjoint-with: {Pitcher, Fielder }

Fielder
isa: ML_Baseball_Player mutually_disjoint-
with: {Pitcher, Catcher}
.
.
.
.
 Tangled Hierarchies

• Hierarchies that are not trees

• Usually hierarchy is an arbitrary directed acyclic
graph.
• Tangled hierarchies requires new property
inheritance algorithm.
 Bird
fly :yes
isa isa

Ostrich
fly :no Pet-Bird

isa fifi isa

fly : ?
•
FIGURE A
• Can fifi fly?
• The correct answer must be ‘no’.
– Although birds in general can fly, the subset of birds , ostriches does not.
– Although class pet bird provides path from fifi to bird and thus to the answer that fifi
can fly, it provides no info that conflicts with the special case knowledge associated with
class ostrich, so it should hove no effect on the answer.