Building a Semantic Network

In this section, we will build a few small semantic networks, retrieve information from them, and use networks to make inferences about the information stored in them. To construct and manipulate these networks, we will use the SNePS User Language (SNePSUL). SNePSUL is a set of commands designed specifically for SNePS. There are two general methods of using SNePSUL. One can either type each SNePSUL command together with its parameters at the SNePS prompt, or one can put a sequence of such commands into one file, and run it. In this section will discuss the first method. The second method will be discussed in the section, ``Writing a Demo File''. Here, we will consider how to represent the (deep) meaning of the statement such as ``Tweety is a bird'', rather than the sentence itself. The process of transforming a sentence into its deep meaning representation, called semantic interpretation, is a task for natural language processing, which we will discuss in a later chapter.