Link-based Reasoning on Conceptual Graphs

In the real world, relationships between objects (for example, dependencies among them) play an important role. Therefore, knowledge representation formalism should offer powerful enough capabilities to represent them. In this paper, we aim to represent complex relations among all kinds of concepts, and to express the dynamic behaviour associated to such relations, and exploit it for deduction on conceptual graphs, thanks to a link-based reasoning. We take inspiration of a link model proposed in object-oriented paradigm, in order to express, in the framework of conceptual graphs: dependency links between concepts, links between links and a mechanism of link consistency management. After introducing a link type hierarchy, and link type definition, we offer predefined links between links, expressed in terms of conceptual graphs and exploited by a consistency management mechanism, in order to: avoid redundancy during the expansion of a type of link in a graph, make deductions on existing graphs, check the consistency of a graph by the properties on the links, complete and verify automatically the acquired knowledge.