Animating Conceptual Graphs

This paper addresses operational aspects of conceptual graph systems. This paper is an attempt to formalize operations within a conceptual graph system by using conceptual graphs themselves to describe the mechanism. We outline a unifying approach that can integrate the notions of a fact base, type definitions, actor definitions, messages, and the assertion and retraction of graphs. Our approach formalizes the notion of type expansion and actor definitions, and in the process also formalizes the notion for any sort of formal assertion in a conceptual graph system. We introduce definitions as concept types called assertional types which are animated through a concept type called an assertional event. We illustrate the assertion of a type definition, a nested definition and an actor definition, using one extended example. We believe this mechanism has immediate and far-reaching value in offering a self-contained, yet animate conceptual graph system architecture.