Querying Natural Logic Knowledge Bases

Abstract

This paper describes the principles of a system applying natural logic as a knowledge base language. Natural logics are regimented fragments of natural language employing high level inference rules. We advocate the use of natural logic for knowledge bases dealing with querying of classes in ontologies and class-relationships such as are common in life-science descriptions. The paper adopts a version of natural logic with recursive restrictive clauses such as relative clauses and adnominal prepositional phrases. It includes passive as well as active voice sentences. We outline a prototype for partial translation of natural language into natural logic, featuring further querying and conceptual path finding in natural logic knowledge bases.