Concept Word Variant

This page is part of the Alex II description.

It describes 4 levels of perceptions and 3 kind of nodes:

• Concept (node)
• Word (node)
  
• Variant (node)
• Input

Classification

Concept

By itself a concept has no name (and no indexation key).

However some concepts receive conventional names, and enter into some classification. Among the concepts, some play a specific role: the connecting concepts.

At the conscience/focus level, concepts receive excitation figures.

A concept mainly exists thru the links it has with word nodes (CW links), and thru the qualified links it has with other concepts (QC links).

Actually the concept level is the only level with significant inter-node connectivity.

Words

Word nodes make the second level of nodes.

Words are namable, and indexable.

In OO logic, a word is an object whose attributes are:

• a string of characters
• a language identifier
• one or many lexical categories (like verb or noun... see below)
• links to concepts (CW links)
• links to variants (WV links)

A word is not directly linked to other words. For instance, the translation process in Alex II always goes (up and down) thru the concept level.

A word never receives excitation in a conscience or focus.

The indexation key contains the combination of the 3 first fields:

• string
• language
• lexical

Thus orange (in french) and orange (in english) are distinct words, because they are part of different languages. Similarly, noyer (verb, french) and noyer (verb, noun) are distinct words, because they relate to different lexical categories.

Variant

Thee variant is the obejct found in the daily spoken language. It is an obvious and usual object.

A variant is linked to 1 and only 1 word, and it does not exist without this link.

Variant objects includes mainly conjugated form, plural forms, feminine forms. Horses is a variant of horse. In french Coquettes is a variant of coquet. Seen is a variant ofsee. Etc..

A variant may be built from a string that also exists as a word string. Thus, in frenchété (conugated form, variant of être) exists in the variant universe, while été (noun) exists in the word universe.

In OO logic, a variant is an object whose attributes are:

• a string of characters
• a language identifiers
• a variant form descriptor
• a link to a word

A variant is described with the three first fields. It is also indexed based on the combination of the three first fields.

Input

The input is the 4th level of perception. An input is NOT translated into an input node (Alex does not use node for input).

Instead an input (for instance a word input) is transformed  into a set of lexically close variants.

This transformation uses standard lexical metrics, like loewenstein distance - and maybe something better when available.

Anyway the input is the nature of the signals received by the captors made available to Alex. The first and most conveninet captor is a human being introducing words thru a keyboard.

Auxiliary notions: language, lexical category, formal variant

These notions are for Alex neither nodes nor concepts (although concepts might be defined for them). But they are used as attributes of words and variants.

• Language: english, french...  The language is an attribute of a word node, and an attribute of a variant node.
  
• Lexical category: verb, noun, adjective, ... The lexical category is an attribute of a word node.
  
• Formal variant: plural, feminine, conjugated form... The formal variant is an attribute of a variant node.
  

Analysis

Link classification

Links are classified according to the level of connected nodes and according to its own nature (qualified or not).

Identifying concepts, words and variants

In order to identify a variant the following is used: string|language|lexical-category.

Examples :

• chevaux|F|P         (F=French P=Plural)
• voyez|F|P2           (F=French P2=Pluriel 2ème personne)

In order to identify a variant the following is used: string|language|formal-variant.

Examples:

• rose|F|N     (N=Noun)
• rose|F|A      (A=Adjective)
• rose|E|N     (E=English N=noun)
• pink|E|A     (E=English A=adjective)

Generally a concept may not be identified, except by its links  (significant exception exists).

Evocation and manifestation

It is not possible to name a concept, but it is possible to evoke - in a fuzzy way - a concept via a set of linked words or via a set of nodes linked thru qualified links (QC links). More generally, a set of words and variants evoke a set of concepts with various weighting factors, and indirectly from there... many linked concepts...

Inversely, when a concept presents itself for communication (in some excitation state), it will be presented, manifested thru various words: the words linked to it through CW links, and the words linked to concepts linked to it thru QC links. The choice of words used for this manifestation may depend on the current excitation state of an active conscience or focus.

Five levels of evocation/manifestation

The 5 levels of EM are:

1. input : any character string (entered using a keyboard or introduced by a input channel, such as a book reader). Language reference may be absent.
   
2. u-variant (unqualified variant) : the set of known variants, per language, with no more property (1 HashSet per language, no variant form in the key)
   
3. q-variant (qualified variant) : the set of known variants, per language, with the property of the variant form (1 HashSet per language, variant form present in the key)
   
4. word : the set known word nodes, roughly the usual dictionary (1 HashSet per langauge, with the lexical category as part of the key).
   
5. concept : the set of known concepts (no HashSet, no indexation key !).

Upward process (evocation):

• 1-2: string distance analysis : lousse evokes louse(E) lousy(E) loss (E) pousse (F) mousse(F) loupe (F).... Sometimes perfect match with a vairiant (distance 0) in one or many languages (plane(e) et plane(F)), but this does not prevent the possible evocation of other variants with non-zero distance.
• 2-3: any u-variant contains the set of the q-variants sharing the same string.
• 3-4: any q-variant is linked to 1! word node.
• 4-5: any word is linked to various concepts, and contains the set of fuzzy links leading to them.
  

Downward process (manifestation)

The manifestation generally occurs within a commucation context (language preference, may more) and within a conscience/focus context.

The manifestation starts from a concept a goes generally down to words, sometimes down to variants (q-variants).

The manifestation may start from one single concept, but more often it will start from all concept excited within a focus.

The manifestation finds various more or less likely words, but only emits the most likely.

This is based on the permeabitlities between concepts and words.

The manifestation is a processus of weighted selection, with restricted emission.

Building the nodes and the jelly

There is a sequential construction of the jelly (nodes and links), completely independant from the conscience and focus.

Limits

Besides the global limits of the Alex project, the links between variants words and concepts still show various problems and limits.

One of them is the issue of expressions. An expresssion is a combinatiopn of words having together a concept-level meaning (evocation) different from the concept-level meaning(s) raised when the involved words are individually used for the evocation process. Thus an expression implies a specific concept-level linking.

Examples in french : en avoir marre ; virage en épingle à cheveux ; bouc émissaire ; tête de turc...