Implementation of meronymic (part-whole) inheritance for semantic networks

摘要

Studies in the field of cognitive science have demonstrated the existence of a taxonomy of meronymic (part-whole) relations, each of which corresponds to a meaning of the English phrase ‘part of’. It is proposed here that equivocations between meronymic and other types of semantic relations can be a source of ambiguity during knowledge elicitation, and are, in some part, responsible for the confusing plethora of types of is_a link to be found in current knowledge-based system environments. Based on the taxonomy of part-whole relations, a general-purpose implementation, and applications of meronymic inheritance for a Rule Based Frame System, are presented.