An Ontological Resource Organized Around Purpose

Abstract

Every artifact has a purpose. Its subparts also have a purpose. Purposes can therefore be used to organize knowledge. PurposeNet is a knowledge base of objects and actions in which the knowledge is organized around purpose. Such knowledge also connects with language namely, verbs for related actions. It can be used with an embedded reasoner, resulting in an effective system for QA, topic-listing, summarization and other tasks. This paper deals with the design of PurposeNet and its implementation. It explains the development of a universally usable simple and robust resource.