A conceptual theory of state changes

Peter Stockinger (1, 2, 3)

1 Inalco - Institut National des Langues et Civilisations Orientales
2 ESCOM - Equipe Sémiotique Cognitive et Nouveaux Médias
3 PLIDAM EA 4514 - Pluralité des langues et des Identités : Didactique, Acquisition, Médiations

I will focus in this paper on what John Sowa calls the 'conceptual relations': In the formal theory there is only one primitive relation called LINK. All others are introduced by definitions. For a practical knowledge representation system, a reasonable number of basic relations should be provided for all the common relations that are used in ordinary language: firstly, case relations also called thematic roles, show how the action or state expressed by verb is related to the entities expressed by subject, object and other complements. They include agent (AGT), patient (PTNT), state (STAT), recipient (RCPT), instrument (INST), destination (DEST), and several others. Secondly, spatial relations include the simple location (LOG) as well as more specific ones that correspond to spatial prepositions such as 'in', On', and 'above'. Thirdly inter-sentential relations relate contexts that include one or more conceptual graphs as referents. (Sowa 1987: 6).

Mots clés: Conceptual graphs CGs; Conceptual relations; State change semantics; Intentional vs non-intentional event; Static situations; Dynamic situations; Aktionsarten; Localist hypothesis

Domaines: Linguistique

Peter Stockinger. A conceptual theory of state changes. Semiotica, 1989, 77 (1-3), pp.137-150. ⟨10.1515/semi.1989.77.1-3.137⟩. ⟨hal-03120763⟩