Semantic Construction Grammar: Bridging the NL / Logic Divide

TL;DR

This paper presents Semantic Construction Grammar (SCG), a versatile system that translates natural language into various logical representations, leveraging Cyc's knowledge base for semantic constraints and inference.

Contribution

It introduces SCG, a novel framework supporting diverse NL-to-logic translation methods with integrated semantic constraints and reasoning capabilities.

Findings

Supports multiple representation types from logical forms to high-arity relations

Integrates with Cyc KB for semantic validation and inference

Facilitates improved NL understanding through semantic constraints

Abstract

In this paper, we discuss Semantic Construction Grammar (SCG), a system developed over the past several years to facilitate translation between natural language and logical representations. Crucially, SCG is designed to support a variety of different methods of representation, ranging from those that are fairly close to the NL structure (e.g. so-called 'logical forms'), to those that are quite different from the NL structure, with higher-order and high-arity relations. Semantic constraints and checks on representations are integral to the process of NL understanding with SCG, and are easily carried out due to the SCG's integration with Cyc's Knowledge Base and inference engine.