WEAK SLOT- AND FILLER-S

TRUCTURES
 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_throw
s
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 and boxed nodes== object/values of attriibutes of an
==attributes
objjectt.. person(Owen)  instance(Owen, Person)
Mammal team(Owen, Liverpool)

isa

has-part
Person Nose

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 Strong slot and filler

structure structure

Semantic Frame Conceptual Scrip

nets s Dependency ts

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
• In semantic netsnets
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 tea
Blue Jack m 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 Mammal
between : Red and isa
liverpool Person
has-part
Nose

uniform instance
color tea
Red Owen m Liverpool
• Representing non binary
predicates:
1.
e.xUnary –
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

is
Visiting _team a
Scor
Australia TEST4 e 4-1

Home
_team

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

Give Book

instanc instanc
e e
agen Object
John t EV 1 BK1

beneficiary

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

2 “john is taller than

. Bill”
John Bill

heigh heigh
t t
greater_th
H1 an H2

Value

72
 Partitioned semantic
• Used to nets
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
Dogs Bite Mail-Carrier
required]
is is is
a a a
assailan victim
d t 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 semantic net.
• “every dog has bitten a mail carrier”

SA
GS Dogs Bite Mail-Carrier

S
isa 1
form

is is is
a a a

g d b m
 assailant victi
m
• “Every dog in the town has bitten the
constable”
Dogs Bite Constables S
GS
A

S
is is
is is
a 1 a
a a

for
m
g d b
victim
m
 assailan
t
• “Every dog in the town has bitten every
constable”
Dogs Bite Constables S
A

S
is is
is
a 1
a a

d b c
victim
assailan
t
for 
m 
is
GS a g
• More examples of sementic nets:
• “ Mary gave the green flowered vase to
her favourite cousin”
Give

instanc
e
agen Object
Mary t EV 1 vase

Colour_pattern
beneficiary

Green
cousin
flowered
favourite
• “every batsman hits a
ball”
S
A
GS Batsman Hits Balls

S
isa 1
form

is is is
a a a

g b h b
 action Acts_o
n
• “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.
 Fram
• esslot and filler structure.
Another kind of weak
• 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
contains: Hotel Room
Chair
Hotel
Chair isa: Chair Frame structure for Hotel
use: sitting_on Chair
location: Hotel
Room

....
...... Frame structure for all
remaining attributes
....
......
....
Frame System for Hotel
Person Jack_Roberts
isa: Mammal instance: Fielder height: 5-
cardinality: 6,000,000,000 10
* Handed: right balls: right
Adult Male batting_avg: 0.309
isa: Person team: Chicago cubs
Cardinality: 2,000,000,000 uniform_color: blue
* Height: 5- 10
ML_Baseball_Player Fielder
isa: Adult_Male
isa: ML_Baseball_Player
cardinality: 624
cardinality: 376
* height: 6-1
batting_avg: 0.262
* bats: equal to handed
* batting-avg: 0.252
ML_Baseball_Team
* team:
isa: Team
*uniform_color:
cardinality: 26
team_size: 24 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.
is is is is is
a ML_Baseball_Player a
a a a
American Nationa
Fielder Pitcher Catcher
Leaguer l
Leaguer
instanc instanc
e Jack e
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
is is
a a
Ostrich
fly :no Pet-Bird

is fifi is
a fly : a

• ?

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.
 Quaker Republican
pacifist: true pacifist: False

instanc Jack instanc

e Pacifist : e
?

FIGURE
• Is Jack Pacifist?
– Ambiguity
B

• One way to solve ambiguity is to base the new inheritance algo based on
path
length:
– Using BFS start with the frame for which slot value is needed.
– Follow its instance links, then follow isa links upwards .
– If the path produces a value it can be terminated, as can all other paths once their
• Using this technique our answers to fifi problem is :’no’
and for jack problem we get 2 values hence
‘contradiction’.
• Now consider following hierarchies: FIGURE
Bird
is fly :yes C
a
Ostrich
fly: no

is
a is
Plumed Ostrich a

is
Pet-Bird
a
White-
Plumed
Ostrich
fifi instanc
instanc
fly : e
e
• Our new algo gives ?
answer: fifi can i.e. Fly:
fly. yes.
FIGURE Republican
D pacifist: false

is
a
Quaker Conservative
pacifist: true Republican

instanc instanc
e Jack
e
Pacifist :
?

• Here our new algo reaches Quaker and

deduces pacifist:true and stops
without noticing further contradiction.
• Solution to the problem is to base our algo not
based on path length but on inferential distance.

Class 1 Class 2 Class 3

• Class 1 is closer to class2 than class 3 if class1 has an

inferential path through class2 to class3.
• For figure A answer is no
• For figure B Contradiction