ThoughtTreasure

ThoughtTreasure is a commonsense knowledge base and architecture for natural language processing.It contains both declarative and proceduralknowledge.

Declarative knowledge

ThoughtTreasure's knowledge baseconsists of concepts, which arelinked to one another by assertions.An assertion is represented in the form

@timestamp:timestamp| [concept ...]

Some examples of assertions in ThoughtTreasure are:

[isa soda drink] (A soda is a drink.)

[part-of phone-ringer phone] (A phone ringer is part of a phone.)

[green green-pea] (A green pea is green.)

[diameter-of green-pea .25in] (The diameter of a green pea is .25 inches.)

[duration attend-play NUMBER:second:10800] (The duration of a play is 10,800 seconds.)

[product-of Intel-8080 Intel] (An Intel 8080 is a product of Intel.)

@19770120:19810120| [President-of country-USA Jimmy-Carter] (Jimmy Carter was the President of the USA from January 20, 1977 to January 20, 1981.)

ThoughtTreasure contains a total of27,000 concepts and 51,000 assertions.It has an upper ontology and severaldomain-specific lower ontologies such as for clothing,food, and music.

Each concept is associated with zero or more lexical entries (words and phrases).Two languages are supported: English and French.ThoughtTreasure has 35,000 English lexical entries and21,000 French lexical entries.In addition to open-class lexical entries such asnouns, verbs, adjectives, and adverbs, ThoughtTreasurealso contains closed-class lexical entries such asconjunctions, determiners, interjections,prepositions, and pronouns. It also contains a dictionaryof names.

Zero or more features are attached to each lexical entry.There are 118 features [http://www.signiform.com/tt/htm/quickref.htm] .Examples are ZEROART (zero article taker),SING (singular), FML (formal), CAN (Canadian), ENG (English), and N(noun).Argument structure is provided for verbs.For example, the argument structure for the conceptwalk-intois

*> S ---- (from IO [2] ) into IO

ThoughtTreasure contains 93 scripts, orrepresentations of typical activities.

ThoughtTreasure contains 29 grids, which represent the arrangement ofobjects in typical locations such as hotel rooms, kitchens, andtheaters. Grids are connected together by wormholes.

Procedural knowledge

ThoughtTreasure includes a planning agency for achievinggoals in a simulated world and anunderstanding agency for understanding stories andasking and answering questions.

ThoughtTreasure contains the following proceduresfor natural language processing:

* Algorithmic, analogical and derivational morphology mechanisms
* Anaphoric parser
* Chatterbot
* Corpus analysis tools
* Dictionary generator
* Exhaustive lexical tagger
* Intension resolver (to find objects matching descriptions)
* Named entity recognizers
* Natural language generator
* Semantic parser
* Syntactic parser
* Table information extractor

ThoughtTreasure contains the following proceduresthat deal with space:

* 2-dimensional grid (occupancy array) path planner
* Analogical grid instantiator
* Intergrid path planner
* Trip planner

It contains operations dealing with parts and wholes of objects,grids (distance, subspace),large space (planetary distance, polity containment),andnested space (room, floor, building, city, planet).

Other procedures in ThoughtTreasure include:

* Assertion learner
* Clothing color matcher
* Free association generator
* Knowledge base storage and retrieval functions
* Typing simulator with errors

Using ThoughtTreasure

ThoughtTreasure can be used to add common sense to applications byusing its knowledge base or by communicating with a ThoughtTreasureserver.

The ThoughtTreasure knowledge base is available in three file formats:
* ThoughtTreasure database file format [http://www.signiform.com/tt/htm/download.htm]
* TTKB format [http://www.signiform.com/tt/htm/ttkb.htm]
* CycL format [http://www.signiform.com/tt/ttkb/tt0.00022.cycl.gz] Python code for accessing TTKB is available.TTKB can also be queried over the Internet [http://www.signiform.com/tt/python/query.htm] .

A ThoughtTreasure server can be accessed using the Java-based clientAPI [http://www.signiform.com/tt/java/doc/] or by directly using the ThoughtTreasure server protocol [http://www.signiform.com/tt/htm/ttsp.htm] .

ThoughtTreasure has been used to build various applications such as aDJ's assistant, a movie review question answering program, and a smartcalendar.

History

ThoughtTreasure was begun by Erik T. Mueller in December 1993.The first version was released on April 28, 1996. Mueller established the company Signiform in 1997 to pursue commercial applications of ThoughtTreasure. However, the company was unsuccessful and Signiform closed its doors in 2000. Although the company's site is still being hosted, no further development of ThoughtTreasure has been released since then.

ee also

* Cyc
* Open Mind Common Sense
* WordNet

External links

* [http://www.signiform.com/tt/htm/tt.htm ThoughtTreasure home page] (Presently redirects to info about creator's book)

References

* Mueller, Erik T. (1998). " [http://www.signiform.com/tt/book/ Natural language processing with ThoughtTreasure] ". New York: Signiform.
* Mueller, Erik T. (1999). " [http://www.signiform.com/tt/htm/script.htm A database and lexicon of scripts for ThoughtTreasure] ".
* Mueller, Erik T. (2000). " [http://www.signiform.com/erik/pubs/sensical.htm A calendar with common sense] ." "Proceedings of the 2000 International Conference on Intelligent User Interfaces" (pp. 198-201). New York: ACM.