A structured representation of word-senses for semantic analysis

A framework for a structured representation of semantic knowledge (e.g. word-senses) has been defined at the IBM Scientific Center of Roma, as part of a project on Italian Text Understanding. This representation, based on the conceptual graphs formalism [SOW84], expresses deep knowledge (pragmatic) on word-senses. The knowledge base data structure is such as to provide easy access by the semantic verification algorithm. This paper discusses some important problem related to the definition of a semantic knowledge base, as depth versus generality, hierarchical ordering of concept types, etc., and describes the solutions adopted within the text understanding project.