The Semantics Application Interface

Mapping natural language into a formal language with well defined semantics is prerequisite but not enough for practical applications such as “front ends” to database systems or other applications. We have to translate the “logical form” produced by the semantics module into a formal language understood by the application. Many applications allow a programmatic interface, and some applications (such as databases) define an interface language, e.g. SQL which has become a standardised language. For communication with knowledge bases, a standard communication language— KIF “Knowledge Interchange Format”—is emerging ([7]), making it possible to query or update knowledge bases written in different representation languages.