Relating sentences and semantic networks with procedural logic
Robert F. Simmons, Daniel L. Chester · Communications of the ACM · 1982
A system of symmetric clausal logic axioms is shown to transform a thirteen-sentence narrative about a V-2 rocket flight into semantic case relations.The same axioms translate the case relations into English sentences.An approach to defining schemas in clausal logic is presented and applied in the form of a mini-Flight schema to two paragraphs of the text to compute a partitioning of the semantic network into the causal organization of a flight.Properties of rule symmetry and network condensibility are noted to be of importance for natural language processing.Because of the conciseness of the logic interpreter and the clausal representation for grammars and schemas, it is concluded that the procedural logic approach provides an effective programming system that is promising for accomplishing natural language computations on mini-and microcomputers as well as on large mainframes.