John F. Sowa
John F. Sowa spent thirty years working on research and development projects at IBM and another
seven years teaching, writing, and consulting. He has an SB degree in mathematics from MIT, an
AM in applied mathematics from Harvard, and a DSc in computer science from the Vrije
Universiteit Brussel. He is a fellow of the American Association for Artificial Intelligence, and he
has participated in standards projects for conceptual schemas, knowledge sharing, and ontology. In
conjunction with those projects, he edited the draft proposed ANSI standard for conceptual graphs,
which is based on the notation used in his books (Sowa 1984, 2000).
Publications
Publications are listed in reverse chronological order. Those that appear in blue have a link to a web
page for further information. In some cases, that information may be the complete publication or an
updated version.
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"Ontology, metadata, and semiotics," in B. Ganter & G. W. Mineau, eds., Conceptual
Structures: Logical, Linguistic, and Computational Issues, Lecture Notes in AI #1867,
Springer-Verlag, Berlin, 2000, pp. 55-81.
Knowledge Representation: Logical, Philosophical, and Computational Foundations,
Brooks/Cole Publishing Co., Pacific Grove, CA, 2000.
"Review of Philosophy in the Flesh: The Embodied Mind and its Challenge to Western
Thought by George Lakoff and Mark Johnson," in Computational Linguistics, 25:4,
December 1999.
"Relating templates to logic and language," in Information Extraction: Towards Scalable,
Adaptable Systems, ed. by M. T. Pazienza, Lecture Notes in AI #1714, Springer-Verlag,
1999, pp. 76-94.
"Conceptual graphs: draft proposed American National Standard," in W. Tepfenhart & W.
Cyre, eds., Conceptual Structures: Standards and Practices, Lecture Notes in AI #1640,
Springer-Verlag, Berlin, 1999, pp. 1-65.
"Ontological categories," in L. Albertazzi, ed., Shapes of Forms: From Gestalt Psychology
and Phenomenology to Ontology and Mathematics, Kluwer Academic Publishers,
Dordrecht, 1999, pp. 307-340.
"The infinite variety of logics," in O. Herzog & A. Günter, eds., KI-98: Advances in
Artificial Intelligence, Lecture Notes in AI #1504, Springer-Verlag, Berlin, 1998, pp. 31-53.
"Conceptual graph standard and extensions," in M-L Mugnier, & M. Chein, eds.,
Conceptual Structures: Theory, Tools, and Applications, Lecture Notes in AI #1453,
Springer-Verlag, Berlin, 1998, pp. 3-14.
"Conceptual Graphs," in P. Bernus, K. Mertins, & G. Schmidt, eds., Handbook on
Architectures of Information Systems, Springer-Verlag, Berlin, 1998, pp. 287-311.
"Peircean foundations for a theory of context," in D. Lukose et al., eds., Conceptual
Structures: Fulfilling Peirce's Dream, Lecture Notes in AI #1257, Springer-Verlag, Berlin,
1997, pp. 41-64.
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"Matching logical structure to linguistic structure," in N. Houser, D. D. Roberts, & J. Van
Evra, eds., Studies in the Logic of Charles Sanders Peirce, Indiana University Press,
Bloomington, 1997.
"Top-level ontological categories," International J. of Human-Computer Studies, 43:5/6,
1996, 669-686.
"Processes and participants," in Eklund et al., eds. (1996) Conceptual Structures:
Knowledge Representation as Interlingua, Lecture Notes in AI #1115, Springer-Verlag,
Berlin, pp. 1-22.
"Syntax, semantics, and pragmatics of contexts," in Ellis et al. (1995) Conceptual
Structures: Applications, Implementation, and Theory, Lecture Notes in #AI 954, SpringerVerlag, Berlin, pp. 1-15.
"Lexical structures and conceptual structures," in J. Pustejovsky, ed., Semantics and the
Lexicon, Kluwer Academic Publishers, Dordrecht, 1993, pp. 223-262.
"Logical foundations for representing object-oriented systems," Journal of Experimental &
Theoretical AI, vol. 5, nos. 2&3, 1993, pp. 237-261.
"Relating diagrams to logic," in G. Mineau, B. Moulin, & J. F. Sowa eds., Conceptual
Graphs for Knowledge Representation, Springer-Verlag, New York, 1993.
"Logic-based standards for the conceptual schema," in J. Cuena, ed., Knowledge Oriented
Software Design, North-Holland Publishing Co., Amsterdam, 1993, pp. 251-280.
"Review of Building Large Knowledge-Based Systems: Representation and Inference in the
Cyc Project by D. B. Lenat & R. V. Guha," Artificial Intelligence 61:1, 1993, 95-104.
"Conceptual analysis as a basis for knowledge acquisition," in R. R. Hoffman, ed., The
Psychology of Experts: Cognitive Research and Empirical AI, Springer-Verlag, New York,
1992, pp. 80-96.
"Conceptual graphs summary," in T. E. Nagle, J. A. Nagle, L. L. Gerholz, & P. W. Eklund,
eds., Conceptual Structures: Current Research and Practice, Ellis Horwood, New York,
1992, pp. 3-51.
"Conceptual graphs as a universal knowledge representation," Computers and Mathematics
with Applications, vol. 23, no 2-5, 1992. Reprinted in Fritz Lehmann, ed., Semantic
Networks in Artificial Intelligence, Pergamon Press, Oxford, 1992, pp. 75-93.
"Logical structures in the lexicon," in Lexical Semantics and Commonsense Reasoning,
edited by James Pustejovsky and Sabine Bergler, Lecture Notes in Artificial Intelligence
#627, Springer-Verlag, Berlin, 1992, pp. 39-60.
"Extending and formalizing the Framework for Information Systems Architecture,"
coauthored with John A. Zachman, IBM Systems Journal, vol. 31, no. 3, pp. 590-616, 1992.
"A logic-based approach to enterprise integration," coauthored with John A. Zachman, in C.
J. Petrie, ed., Enterprise Integration Modeling, MIT Press, Cambridge, MA, 1992, pp. 152163.
"Semantic networks," Encyclopedia of Artificial Intelligence, edited by S. C. Shapiro,
Wiley, New York, 1987; revised and extended for the second edition, 1992.
"Towards a reintegration of AI research," in Future Directions in AI, ed. by P. A. Flach &
R. A. Meersman, North-Holland Publishing Co., Amsterdam, 1991, pp. 25-33.
Principles of Semantic Networks: Explorations in the Representation of Knowledge, edited
by J. F. Sowa, Morgan Kaufmann Publishers, San Mateo, CA, 1991.
"Towards the expressive power of natural languages," in J. F. Sowa, ed., Principles of
Semantic Networks, Morgan Kaufmann Publishers, San Mateo, CA, 1991, pp. 157-189.
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"Knowledge representation in databases, expert systems, and natural language," in R.A.
Meersman, Zh. Shi, & C-H. Kung, Artificial Intelligence in Databases and Information
Systems, North-Holland Publishing Co., New York, 1990, pp. 17-50.
"Definitional mechanisms for restructuring knowledge bases," in Z. W. Ras, M. Zemankova,
& M. L. Emrich, eds., Methodologies for Intelligent Systems, 5, North-Holland Publishing
Co., New York, 1990, pp. 194-211.
"Crystallizing theories out of knowledge soup," in Z. W. Ras & M. Zemankova, eds.,
Intelligent Systems: State of the Art and Future Directions, Ellis Horwood Ltd., London,
1990, pp. 456-487.
"Finding structure in knowledge soup," Proc. Info Japan '90, Information Processing
Society of Japan, Tokyo, vol. 2, pp. 245-252, 1990.
"A prolog to Prolog," in Knowledge Systems and Prolog, by A. Walker (ed), M. McCord, J.
Sowa, & W. Wilson, Addison-Wesley, Reading, MA, 1987; revised and extended for the
second edition, 1990.
"Knowledge acquisition by teachable systems," in J.P. Martins and E.M. Morgado, eds.,
EPIA 89, Lecture Notes in AI #390, Springer-Verlag, Berlin, 1989, pp. 381-396.
"Review of Logical Foundations of Artificial Intelligence by Michael R. Genesereth & Nils
J. Nilsson," Artificial Intelligence 38:1, 1989, 125-131.
Knowledge Representation, Lecture notes for the IJCAI-89 tutorial, co-authored with N. Y.
Foo, AAAI, Menlo Park, CA, 1989.
"Using a lexicon of canonical graphs in a semantic interpreter," in M. Evens, ed., Relational
Models of the Lexicon, Cambridge University Press, 1988, pp. 113-137.
Knowledge Representation, Lecture notes for the AAAI-88 tutorial, co-authored with D.
Skuce, AAAI, Menlo Park, CA, 1988.
"Conceptual graph notation," in J. W. Esch, ed., Proceedings of the Third Annual Workshop
on Conceptual Graphs, AAAI, Menlo Park, CA, 1988, pp. 2-1 to 2-22.
"Implementing a semantic interpreter using conceptual graphs," co-authored with Eileen C.
Way, IBM Journal of Research and Development 30:1, pp. 57-69, January, 1986.
"Una metodología para la tecnología de la informatión," Programación Informática:
Sistemas Expertos, Instituto de Ciencias del Hombre, Madrid, pp. 23-38, 1985. (Spanish
translation of an invited talk presented in November, 1984.)
Conceptual Structures: Information Processing in Mind and Machine, Addison-Wesley,
Reading, MA 1984.
"Interactive Language Implementation System (ILIS)," IBM Journal of Research and
Development 28:1, pp. 28-39, 1984.
"Generating language from conceptual graphs," Computers and Mathematics with
Applications 9:1, pp. 29-43, 1983.
"A conceptual schema for knowledge based systems," Proceedings of the Workshop on
Data Abstraction, Databases, and Conceptual Modeling, SIGMOD Record, ACM, 11:2,
193-195, 1981.
"Semantics of conceptual graphs," Proceedings of the 17th Annual Meeting of the
Association for Computational Linguistics, pp. 39-44, 1979.
"Definitional mechanisms for conceptual graphs," Graph Grammars and their Application
to Computer Science and Biology, edited by V. Claus, H. Ehrig, & G. Rozenberg, Springer
Verlag, Berlin, pp. 426-439, 1979.
"Conceptual graphs for a data base interface," IBM Journal of Research and Development
20:4, pp. 336-357, 1976.
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"Thought clusters in early Greek oral poetry," co-authored with Cora A. Sowa, Computers
and the Humanities 8, pp. 131-146, 1974.
Directory of this Web Site
This web site contains material related to my research and publications:
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My recently published book on knowledge representation.
A summary of the ontology described in the KR book.
The draft proposed ANSI standard for conceptual graphs and related material.
Memoirs, observations, and predictions about computer systems and their history..
A tutorial on sets, functions, logic, grammars, model theory, etc..
Links to over 600 web sites with background material about people and topics mentioned in
the KR book.
Miscellaneous information that I haven't yet decided how to organize.
Send comments to John F. Sowa.