Conceptual Lexicon Using an Object-Oriented Language

Conceptual Lexicon Using an Object-Oriented Language Shoiehi YOKOYAMA Kenji HANAKATA Electrotechnical Laboratory Universitat Stuttgart Tsukuba, Ibaraki, Japan Stuttgart, F. R. Germany Abstract This paper describes the construction of a lexicon representing abstract concepts. This lexicon is written by an object-oriented language, CTALK, and forms a dynamic network system controlled by object-oriented mechanisms. The content of the lexicon is constructed using a Japanese dictionary. First, entry words and their definition parts are derived from the dictionary. Second, syntactic and semantic information is analyzed from these parts. Finally, superconcepts are assigned in the superconcept part in an object, static parts to the slot values, and dynamic operations to the message parts, respectively. One word has one object in a world, but through the superconcept part and slot part this connects to the subconcept of other words and worlds. When relative concepts are accumulated, the result will be a model of human thoughts which have conscious and unconscious parts. 1.Introduction Semantic relations among words or concepts have been represented as a slot filler definition in the lexicon [Bobrow 77]. These relations are usually represented as frame lists in LISP or Prolog. When the representation of a large-scale lexicon is needed, it is difficult to make and maintain the lexicon because the relation of super/subconcepts dramatically increases. An object-oriented language has a strong inference mechanism. It has already been used for parsing sentences [Hayes 84, Nishida 84]. It can also describe the representation of semantic relations more simply than LISP. CTALK is such an object-oriented language and can dynamically handle the network using the concept of a world a group of objects -- and an object. Now the systematization of semantic relations is made for the words which represent concrete objects. However, the organization of abstract words is difficult because it is not so clear how to obtain and deal with abstract concepts. On the other hand, research is being conducted to computerize or categorize the common dictionary [Yokoyama 77, Tsurumaru 84]. This paper describes a trial of systematization and categorization of abstract words. The procedure is as follows: first, the definition parts of abstract words in the dictionary are semantically analyzed, and the semantic relations are derived. Second, an object is established for an abstract word. Third, the super/subeoncepts of these words are assigned to a father-son relation among the objects corresponding to the semantic network. Then the slot definitions are assigned to the object. From these slot values, new objects are made under the relative objects. Finally, the network is constructed from these abstract words. The network formed by this method is considered to be a model of human consciousness. That is, when a human is reminded of a concept, other concepts relative to it are simultaneously extracted from the memory and stay beneath the main memory. This approach is considered to be an implementation of interactive activation model [Rumelhart 82] in abstract concept level. 2.Object-oriented language CTALK The object oriented language, CTALK, was developed at Universitat Stuttgart [Hanakata 84]. In this …

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