ThoughtTreasure is a commonsense knowledge base and architecture for natural language processing

Natural language processing

Natural language processing is a field of computer science and linguistics concerned with the interactions between computers and human languages; it began as a branch of artificial intelligence....

.
It contains both declarative and procedural
knowledge.

Declarative knowledge

ThoughtTreasure's knowledge base
consists of concepts, which are
linked 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 of
27,000 concepts and 51,000 assertions.
It has an upper ontology and several
domain-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 and
21,000 French lexical entries.
In addition to open-class lexical entries such as
nouns, verbs, adjectives, and adverbs, ThoughtTreasure
also contains closed-class lexical entries such as
conjunctions, determiners, interjections,
prepositions, and pronouns. It also contains a dictionary
of 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 concept
walk-into
is

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

ThoughtTreasure contains 93 scripts, or
representations of typical activities.

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

Procedural knowledge

ThoughtTreasure includes a planning agency for achieving
goals in a simulated world and an
understanding agency for understanding stories and
asking and answering questions.

ThoughtTreasure contains the following procedures
for 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 procedures
that 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),
and
nested 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 by
using its knowledge base or by communicating with a ThoughtTreasure
server.

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 client
API 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 a
DJ's assistant, a movie review question answering program, and a smart
calendar.

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.

External links

• ThoughtTreasure home page (Presently redirects to info about creator's book) Site is down.