ThoughtTreasure

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[edit] Summary

• System Name: ThoughtTreasure generator
• Short Description: Generates any ThoughtTreasure assertion for which appropriate lexical entries are defined
• URL: http://www.signiform.com/tt/htm/tt.htm
• System Builders: Mueller^[1]
• Development Period: 1994–2000
• Languages: English, French

Description

Generates any ThoughtTreasure assertion for which appropriate lexical entries are defined. Under development since 1994, ThoughtTreasure is a comprehensive platform for natural language processing (English and French) and commonsense reasoning. ThoughtTreasure contains a database of 25,000 concepts organized into a hierarchy. For example, Evian is a type of flat-water, which is a type of drinking-water, which is a type of beverage, which is a type of food, and so on.

Each concept has one or more English and French approximate synonyms, for a total of 55,000 words and phrases. For example, associated with the food concept are the English words food and foodstuffs and the French words aliment and nourriture (and others). <p> ThoughtTreasure contains 50,000 assertions about concepts, such as: a green-pea is a seed-vegetable, a green-pea is green, a green-pea is part of a pod-of-peas, and a pod-of-peas is found in a typical grocery store. <p> ThoughtTreasure contains about 100 scripts, or computer-understandable descriptions of typical activities such as going to a restaurant or birthday party. <p> ThoughtTreasure contains 70,000 lines of C code implementing:

• text agents for recognizing words, phrases, names, and phone numbers,
• mechanisms for learning new words,
• a syntactic parser,
• a natural language generator,
• a semantic parser for producing a surface-level understanding of a sentence,
• an anaphoric parser for resolving pronouns,
• planning agents for achieving goals on behalf of simulated actors, and
• understanding agents for producing a more detailed understanding of a discourse.

<P>The ThoughtTreasure system was developed by Erik Mueller under the guide of the company Signiform. Signiform was founded in 1997; it shut down business in 2000.

References

1. ↑ Mueller, E. T. (1998). Natural language processing with ThoughtTreasure. New York: Signiform. ^Bib