Using an Ontology for Guiding Natural Language Interaction with Knowledge Based Systems

CONCEPT SIMPLE_CONSTRUCTIVE_O OF isa isa isa isa isa isa isa isa ... ... ... Figure 4.1: A fragment of the CO general level The application level represents the application concepts and attributes involved in the communication as well as all possible operations on those concepts. The domain and functional knowledge for a specific application is represented on the basis of the knowledge described in the general level. Two sublevels were distinguished on the application level: the description level and the case level. The description level represents all concepts, attributes and operations describing the application knowledge. The concepts and attributes must be defined manually following the commitments described above. All communication tasks needed for a specific application are obtained automatically by adapting the communication tasks in the general level to the application concepts and attributes. This level cannot be modified during the communication. The case level describes all information about the specific cases examined by the KBS during the exploitation phase. All knowledge represented at the case level is an instantiation of the description level. While the description level is static, the case level is dynamic. The case level is built incrementally during the communication process. 4.3 THE TAXONOMY OF CONCEPTS