Conceptual Dependency

Lecture Module 17

Conceptual Dependency (CD)

CD theory was developed by Schank in 1973 to 1975

to represent the meaning of NL sentences.

It helps in drawing inferences

It is independent of the language

CD representation of a sentence is not built using

words in the sentence rather built using conceptual

primitives which give the intended meanings of
words.
CD provides structures and specific set of
primitives from which representation can be built.

Primitive Acts of CD theory

ATRANS
PTRANS
PROPEL
MOVE
GRASP
INGEST
EXPEL

MTRANS
MBUILD
SPEAK
ATTEND

Transfer of an abstract relationship (i.e. give)

Transfer of the physical location of an object (e.g., go)
Application of physical force to an object (e.g. push)
Movement of a body part by its owner (e.g. kick)
Grasping of an object by an action (e.g. throw)
Ingesting of an object by an animal (e.g. eat)
Expulsion of something from the body of an animal
(e.g. cry)
Transfer of mental information (e.g. tell)
Building new information out of old (e.g decide)
Producing of sounds (e.g. say)
Focusing of a sense organ toward a stimulus
(e.g. listen)

Conceptual category
There are four conceptual categories

ACT
PP
AA
PA

Actions {one of the CD primitives}

Objects {picture producers}
Modifiers of actions {action aiders}
Modifiers of PPs {picture aiders}

Example
I gave a book to the man. CD representation is as

follows:
P

O
R
man (to)
I ATRANS book
I (from)

It should be noted that this representation is same for

different saying with same meaning. For example

I gave the man a book,

The man got book from me,
The book was given to man by me etc.

Few conventions
Arrows indicate directions of dependency
Double arrow indicates two way link between

actor and action.

O for the object case relation
R for the recipient case relation
P for past tense
D - destination

Some of Conceptualizations of CD
Dependency

structures are themselves

conceptualization and can serve as
components of larger dependency structures.
The dependencies among conceptualization
correspond to semantic relations among the
underlying concepts.
We will list the most important ones allowed
by CD.
Remaining can be seen from the book.

Rule 1: PP ACT
It describes the relationship between an actor

and the event he or she causes.

This is a two-way dependency, since neither actor

nor event can be considered primary.
The letter P in the dependency link indicates past
tense.

Example: John ran

CD Rep:

P
John PTRANS

Rule 2: ACT

PP

It describes the relationship between a ACT

and a PP (object) of ACT.

The direction of the arrow is toward the ACT since

the context of the specific ACT determines the
meaning of the object relation.

Example: John pushed the bike

CD Rep:

John PROPEL bike

Rule 3: PP PP
It describes the relationship between two PPs,

one of which belongs to the set defined by the

other.
Example:John is doctor

CD Rep:

John doctor

Rule 4: PP

PP

It describes the relationship between two PPs, one of

which provides a particular kind of information about

the other.

The three most common types of information to be

provided in this way are possession ( shown as POSSBY), location (shown as LOC), and physical containment
(shown as CONT).
The direction of the arrow is again toward the concept
being described.

Example: Johns

CD Rep

dog
dog

poss-by

John

Rule 5: PP PA
It describes the relationship between a PP and

a PA that is asserted to describe it.

PA represents states of PP such as height, health

etc.

Example:John is fat

CD Rep

John weight (> 80)

Rule 6: PP

PA

It describes the relationship between a PP and

an attribute that already has been predicated of

it.

Direction is towards PP being described.

Example: Smart John

CD Rep

John smart

Rule 7:

PP (to)

ACT
PP (from)
It describes the relationship between an ACT
and the source and the recipient of the ACT

Example: John took the book from Mary

R

CD Rep:

John

John ATRANS
O
Mary
book

 PA

Rule 8:

PP

PA
It describes the relationship that describes the
change in state.
Example: Tree grows

CD Rep:

size > C
Tree
size = C

 {x}
Rule 9:

{y}
It describes the relationship between one
conceptualization and another that causes it.

Here {x} is causes {y} i.e., if x then y

Example: Bill shot Bob

{x} : Bill shot Bob

{y} : Bobs health is poor

 {x}
Rule 10:

{y}
It describes the relationship between one
conceptualization with another that is
happening at the time of the first.

Here {y} is happening while {x} is in progress.

Example: While going home I saw a snake

I am going home

I saw a snake

Generation of CD representations

Inferences Associated with Primitive

Act
General inferences are stored with each primitive Act

thus reducing the number of inferences that need to

be stored explicitly with each concept.
For example, from a sentence John killed Mike, we
can infer that Mike is dead.
Let us take another example of primitive Act INGEST.
The following inferences can be associated with it.

The object ingested is no longer available in its original form.

If object is eatable, then the actor has less hunger.
If object is toxic, then the actors heath is bad.
The physical position of object has changed. So PTRANS is
inferred.

Cont
Example: The verbs {give, take, steal, donate} involve

a transfer of ownership of an object.

If any of them occurs, then inferences about who now has

the object and who once had the object may be important.
In a CD representation, these possible inferences can be
stated once and associated with the primitive ACT
ATRANS.

Consider another sentence Bill threatened John with

a broken nose

Sentence interpretation is that Bill informed John that he

(Bill) will do something to break johns nose.
Bill did (said) so in order that John will believe that if he
(john) does some other thing (different from what Bill
wanted) then Bill will break Johns nose.

Problems with CD Representation

It is difficult to

construct original sentence from its corresponding CD

representation.
CD representation can be used as a general model for
knowledge representation, because this theory is based on
representation of events as well as all the information related
to events.

Rules are to be carefully designed for each primitive

action in order to obtain semantically correct

interpretation.

Contd
Many verbs may fall under different primitive

ACTs, and it becomes difficult to find correct

primitive in the given context.
The CD representation becomes complex
requiring lot of storage for many simple
actions.
For example, the sentence John bet Mike
that Indian cricket team will win incoming
world cup will require huge CD structure.

Conceptual Parsing
Conceptual parsing is required for generating CD

representation from source sentences in natural

language.
The main steps involved in CD parsing are as follows:

Syntactic processor extracts main verb and noun along with

syntactic category of the verb (transitive or intransitive) from
the sentence.
Conceptual processor then makes use of verbACT
dictionary.
Once the correct entry from dictionary is chosen, CD
processor analyses the rest of sentence looking for
arguments for empty slots of the verb.
CD processor examines possible interpretation in a welldefined order.

Example
Case1: Handling of with PP phrase by CD processor

and formulating strategies to disambiguate the

meanings.

Type1: John broke the door with hammer non animate

Type2: John broke the door with Mike animate

Rule 1: If PP in with PP phrase is non-animate and CD

Act requires instrument then the sentence is of Type1,

where PP (hammer) is resolved to instrument.
Rule 2: If PP in with PP phrase is animate and CD Act
requires instrument then the sentence is of Type2, where
PP (Mike) is resolved as co-actor.

Contd..
Case2: If PPs in both the sentences are non-

animate, then they have to be resolved using

semantic lexicon.

Type3: John went to the garden with flowers

Type4: John went to the garden with bag

In Type3, non-animate noun flowers is part of

garden, whereas in Type4, non-animate bag is

some object not related to garden.
Such association of word senses could be found in
Word-Net and then disambiguation is possible.
Here noun bag is treated as possession by John.

Contd..
Case 3: If PPs in the sentences are animate, then

they have to be resolved using semantic lexicon and

context.
Consider the following examples.

Type5: John went to the garden with Mike

Type6: John went to the garden with butterflies
Type7: John went to the garden with dog

In these sentences, Mike, butterflies and dog are

animate PPs and can be resolved as follows:

Mike is easily resolved to co-actor of John as both
are human and have similar characteristics.

Contd..
Word-Net can be used to check if butterfly and

garden has some common sense.

Dog is still ambiguous.
It may be treated as possession of actor or may be a
part of garden as animals many wonder in garden.
Such situations can be further resolved by
considering the context of sentences.
We can use semantic lexicon dictionary to resolve
some of the ambiguities.

Script Structure
Scripts were introduced by Schank and Abelson

introduced in 1977 that used CD framework.

The scripts are useful in describing certain
stereotyped situations such as going to theater
It consists of set of slots containing default values
along with some information about the type of values
similar to frames.
It differs from FS as the values of the slots in scripts
must be ordered and have more specialized roles.
In real world situations, we see that event tends to
occur in known patterns because of clausal
relationship to the occurrence of events

Script Components
Each script contains the following main components.

Entry Conditions: Must be satisfied before events in the

script can occur.
Results: Conditions that will be true after events in script
occur.
Props: Slots representing objects involved in the events.
Roles: Persons involved in the events.
Track: Specific variation on more general pattern in the
script. Different tracks may share many components of the
same script but not all.
Scenes: The sequence of events that occur. Events are
represented in conceptual dependency form.

Script Invocation
It must be activated based on its significance.
If the topic is important, then the script should be opened.
If a topic is just mentioned, then a pointer to that script could

be held.
For example, given John enjoyed the play in theater, a script
Play in Theater suggested above is invoked.
All implicit questions can be answered correctly.
Here the significance of this script is high.

Did john go to theater?

Did he buy ticket?
Did he have money?

If we have a sentence like John went to theater to pick his

daughter, then invoking this script will lead to many wrong

answers.

Here significance of the script theater is less.

Getting significance from the story is not straightforward.

However, some heuristics can be applied to get the value.

Advantages / Disadvantages of Script

Advantages

Capable of predicting implicit events

Single coherent interpretation may be build up from a
collection of observations.

Disadvantage

More specific (inflexible) and less general than frames.

Not suitable to represent all kinds of knowledge.

To deal with inflexibility, smaller modules called

memory organization packets (MOP) can be

combined in a way that is appropriate for the
situation.