Linking Typed Feature Formalisms and Terminological Knowledge Representation Languages in Natural Language Front-Ends

ur K ¨ unstliche In-telligenz, DFKI) with sites in Kaiserslautern and Saarbrücken is a non-profit organization which was founded in 1988. The DFKI conducts application-oriented basic research in the field of artificial intelligence and other related subfields of computer science. The overall goal is to construct systems with technical knowledge and common sense which-by using AI methods-implement a problem solution for a selected application area. Currently, there are the following research areas at the DFKI: The DFKI strives at making its research results available to the scientific community. There exist many contacts to domestic and foreign research institutions, both in academy and industry. The DFKI hosts technology transfer workshops for shareholders and other interested groups in order to inform about the current state of research. From its beginning, the DFKI has provided an attractive working environment for AI researchers from Germany and from all over the world. The goal is to have a staff of about 100 researchers at the end of the building-up phase. c Deutsches Forschungszentrum für K ¨ unstliche Intelligenz 1994 This work may not be copied or reproduced in whole of part for any commercial purpose. Permission to copy in whole or part without payment of fee is granted for nonprofit educational and research purposes provided that all such whole or partial copies include the following: a notice that such copying is by permission of the Deutsche Forschungszen-trum für K ¨ unstliche Intelligenz, Kaiserslautern, Federal Republic of Germany; an acknowledgement of the authors and individual contributors to the work; all applicable portions of this copyright notice. Copying, reproducing, or republishing for any other purpose shall require a licence with payment of fee to Deutsches Forschungszentrum für K ¨ unstliche Intelligenz. Abstract In this paper we describe an interface between typed feature formalisms and ter-minological languages like KL-ONE. The deenition of such an interface is motivated by the needs of natural language front-ends to AI-systems where information must be transmitted from the front-end to the back-end system and vice versa. We show how some minor extensions to the feature formalism allow for a syntactic description of individual concepts in terms of typed feature structures. Namely, we propose to include intervals and a special kind of sets. Partial consistency checks can be made on these concept descriptions during the uniication of feature terms. Type checking on these special types involves calling the classiier of the terminolog-ical language. The …