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ICCS'01

Conceptual Structures: Extracting and Representing Semantics

Contributions to ICCS 2001

The 9th International Conference on Conceptual Structures

Stanford University, California, USA

July 30th to August 3rd, 2001.

Guy W. Mineau (Ed.)

Dept. of Computer Science

Faculty of Sciences and Engineering

University Laval

Quebec City, Quebec, Canada

mineau@ift.ulaval.ca

Introduction:

ICCS is a yearly conference that proposes to explore ways of acquiring, representing and exploiting human knowledge based on conceptual models of representation that rely heavily on graphical representations. Mainly focused on the conceptual graph (CG) formalism of John Sowa, this conference has expanded its scope to welcome all other related theories: formal concept analysis, formal ontologies, description logics, situation theory, discourse representation theory, SNePS, and other related topics. This year it held a joint session with the 2001 International Workshop on Description Logics, and included workshops on Natural Language Semantics, on the Semantic Web, and CG Tools. Additionally, ICCS was co-located with the Semantic Web Workshop of the DARPA DAML Program and the OntoWeb Network.

Table of Content:

¸ Conference Su mmary

¸ Organizing Committees

¸ Conference Chair

¸ Program Cochairs

¸ Local Arrangement Chair

¸ Editorial Board

¸ Program Committee

¸ Papers in this V o l ume

¸ Query ing

¸ Extracting Semantics

¸ Conceptual Categories

¸ Position Pap ers

Conference Summary:

Following a series of seven annual workshops, the International Conferences on Conceptual Structures (ICCS) have been held annually in Europe (Darmstadt, 2000; Montpellier, 1998), Australia (Sydney, 1996), and North America (Blacksburg, 1999; Seattle, 1997; Santa Cruz, 1995; Washington, 1994; Quebec City, 1993). Their focus is on the formal analysis and representation of conceptual knowledge with applications to artificial intelligence, computational linguistics, and related areas of computer science.

Historically, a group of researchers working on the theory and applications of conceptual graphs (CG) founded ICCS. Over the years, they have broadened the scope to include a wide range of related theories: formal concept analysis, formal ontologies, description logics, situation theory, discourse representation theory, SNePS, and other related topics.

Papers presented at ICCS 2001 cover the following topics: conceptual graphs (theory, applications, and experience with case studies); formal concept analysis, natural language processing with emphasis on semantics and pragmatics; conceptual analysis, knowledge modeling, representation, and visualization; knowledge acquisition; and the theory and applications of ontologies.

The conference proceedings are published each year by Springer-Verlag as part of their Lecture Notes on Artificial Intelligence (LNAI) series (#699, #835, #954, #1115, #1257, #1453, #1640, #1867). This year's proceedings are also published by Springer-Verlag (LNAI #2120), and papers describing on-going research are published in these supplementary proceedings.

Each paper in this volume was classified under one of the following three categories: querying, extracting semantics, and conceptual categories. As we move towards knowledge servers accessible over the World Wide Web, the issues pertaining to the extraction of semantics from text, to the creation of relevant and meaningful structures that capture this knowledge (like ontologies), and our subsequent ability to query these knowledge structures are of the outmost importance. This year's conference definitely draws a path in the right direction. We hope that you enjoy the papers that it has to offer, and that they are useful in your own research.

Organizing Committees:

General Chair

Robert Levinson (USA)

Program Cochairs

Harry Delugach (USA)

Gerd Stumme (Germany)

Local Arrangement Chair

Robert Spillers (USA)

Editorial Board

Galia Angelova (Bulgaria)

Michel Chein (France)

Peter Eklund (Australia)

John Esch (USA)

Bernhard Ganter (Germany)

Roger Hartley (USA)

Mary Keeler (USA)

Lotfi Lakhal (France)

Wilfried Lex (Germany)

Deborah McGuinness (USA)

Guy Mineau (Canada)

Bernard Moulin (Canada)

Marie-Laure Mugnier (France)

Heather Pfeiffer (USA)

Uta Priss (USA)

John Sowa (USA)

Bill Tepfenhart (USA)

Rudolf Wille (Germany)

Program Committee

Jean-François Baget (France)

Tru Cao (U.K.)

Claudio Carpineto (Italy)

Paul Compton (Australia)

Dan Corbett (Australia)

Judy Dick (Canada)

David Genest (France)

Olivier Gerb (Canada)

Carole Goble (UK)

Robert Godin (Canada)

Michel Habib (France)

Ollivier Haemmerl (France)

Adil Kabbaj (Morocco)

Adalbert Kerber (Germany)

Sergei Kuznetsov (Germany)

Pavel Kocura (UK)

Wolfgang Lenski (Germany)

Graham Mann (Australia)

Philippe Martin (Australia)

Joao P. Martins (Portugal)

Ralf Moeller (Germany)

Aldo de Moor (Netherlands)

Amadeo Napoli (France)

Lhouari Nourine (France)

Peter Ûhrstr°m (Denmark)

Peter Patel-Schneider (USA)

Silke Pollandt (Germany)

Susanne Prediger (Germany)

Richard Raban (Australia)

Anne-Marie Rassinoux (Switzerland)

Daniel Rochowiak (USA)

Eric Salvat (France)

Ulrike Sattler (Germany)

Stuart Shapiro (USA)

Finnegan Southey (Canada)

Thanwadee Thanitsukkarn (Thailand)

Petko Valtchev (Canada)

Michel Wermelinger (Portugal)

Karl Erich Wolff (Germany)

Contents:

I. Querying

CG-KQML+: An Agent Communication Language and its Use in a Multi-Agent System

K. Bouzouba, B. Moulin, A. Kabbaj

An Algorithmic Definition of CG Operations Based on a Bootstrap Step

A. Kabbaj, B. Moulin

A CG Query Engine Based on Relational Power Context Families

B. Groh, P. Eklund

A Web-based Browsing Mechanism Based on Conceptual Structures

M. Kim, P. Compton

II. Extracting Semantics

Authoring Operations Based on Weighted Schemata

F. H. Gatzemeier

Structural Parsing

C. Hoede, L. Zhang

CGExtract: Towards Extraction of Conceptual Graphs from Controlled English

S. Boytcheva, P. Dobrev, G. Angelova

Dependency Analysis Using Conceptual Graph

L. Cox, H. S. Delugach

III. Conceptual Categories

Conceptual Modeling Systems: Active Knowledge Processes in Conceptual Categories

C. Landauer, K. L. Bellman

Multi-dimensional Representations of Conceptual Hierarchies

P. Becker

A Triadic Model of Information Flow

U. Priss

Relational Constructions on Semiconcept Graphs

S. Pollandt

IV. Position Papers

The Philosophical Foundation of Conceptual Knowledge û A Sociopragmatic Approach

B. Wyssusek, M. Schwartz, B. Kremberg

Flexible Concept Lattices

E. Mephu Nguifo

SemTalk: A RDFS Editor for Visio 2000

C. Fillies, F. Weichhardt

Description Logics Emerge from Ivory Towers

D. McGuinness

Process Representation in Temporal Concept Analysis

K.E. Wolff

submitted by G. Mineau, July 12, 2001.