Knowledge Explorer News
No. 9
April 22, 1999

Knowledge Explorer version 3.5

1. action phrases
Hopefully, you have not noticed (i.e., had trouble with)
the fact that action phrases are ambiguous in the KR
language. For example, the English sentence

I am aware of that fact.

is translated as

I do be aware of that fact

and there is no way to know where the action (be aware of)
stops and its aobject (that fact) begins. I did not "fix"
this problem because: (1) the problem can be avoided by
using single-word actions,

I do be_aware_of that fact

and (2) a proper solution requires changing the grammar,
making KR less English-like.

I have now decided that allowing action phrases is worth the
price of changing the grammar. Starting with version 3.5,
the general format for action/event statements is

product := subject do action = event ( aobject ) pplist

Thus the above example is translated as

I do be aware of ( that fact )

2. commands and methods
One could argue that the objects of commands and methods
should use this same format. However, command and method
names are normally single words any way. Therefore, the
command and method format will remain the same,

!cmdname argument:1, argument:2, ... pplist
!mname argument:1, argument:2, ... pplist