Conventions and Notations for Knowledge Representation and Retrieval

Much research has focused on the problem of knowledge accessibility, sharing and reuse. Specific languages (e.g. KIF, CG, RDF) and ontologies have been proposed. Common characteristics, conventions or ontological distinctions are beginning to emerge. Since knowledge providers (humans and software agents) must follow common conventions for the knowledge to be widely accessed and re-used, we propose lexical, structural, semantic and ontological conventions based on various knowledge representation projects and our own research. These are minimal conventions that can be followed by most and cover the most common knowledge representation cases. However, agreement and refinements are still required. We also show that a notation can be both readable and expressive by quickly presenting two notations — Formalized English (FE) and Frame-CG (FCG) — that we have derived from CG and Frame-Logics. These notations support the above conventions, and are implemented in our Web-based knowledge representation and document indexation tool, WebKB.