Linguistic database summaries and their protoforms: towards natural language based knowledge discovery tools

We consider linguistic data(base) summaries in the sense of Yager [Information Sciences 28 (1982) 69–86], exemplified by ‘‘most employees are young and well paid’’ (with some degree of truth added), for a personnel database, as an intuitive, human consistent and natural language based knowledge discovery tool. We present first an extension of the classic Yager s approach to involve more sophisticated criteria of goodness, search methods, etc. We advocate the use of the concept of a protoform (prototypical form), that is recently vividly advocated by Zadeh [A prototype-centered approach to adding deduction capabilities to search engines—the concept of a protoform. BISC Seminar, University of California, Berkeley, 2002], as a general form of a linguistic data summary. We present an extension of our interactive approach, based on fuzzy logic and fuzzy database queries, which makes it possible to implement such linguistic data summaries. We show how fuzzy queries are related to linguistic summaries, and show that one can introduce a hierarchy of protoforms, or abstract summaries in the sense of latest 0020-0255/$ see front matter 2005 Published by Elsevier Inc. doi:10.1016/j.ins.2005.03.002 * Corresponding author at: Systems Research Institute, Polish Academy of Sciences, ul. Newelska 6, 01-447 Warsaw, Poland. Tel.: +48 22 836 44 14 01 447; fax: +48 22 837 27 72. E-mail addresses: [email protected] (J. Kacprzyk), [email protected] (S. Zadro_ zny). 282 J. Kacprzyk, S. Zadro_ zny / Information Sciences 173 (2005) 281–304 Zadeh s [A prototype-centered approach to adding deduction capabilities to search engines—the concept of a protoform. BISC Seminar, University of California, Berkeley, 2002] ideas meant mainly for increasing deduction capabilities of search engines. For illustration we show an implementation for a sales database in a computer retailer, employing some type of a protoform of a linguistic summary. 2005 Published by Elsevier Inc.