ABSTRACT
This chapter presents the general notion of the conceptual structure, and the main discussion thereafter develops a means for representing conceptual structure. It is organized under three major headings: basic representation of conceptual structures in terms of graphs; extension of this representation; and derivation of new results. A conceptual structure is defined as a network of concepts and relations that conveys the speaker's meaning. In respect to such psychological claims, a conceptual structure representation is distinguished from most representations designed for computer implementation and from transformational grammar representations. The conceptual structure includes both the sensory-motor content of speech and the non-sensory-motor content to which it is extended. The chapter introduces the idea of a conceptual structure representation and presented a means for describing such a structure. Labeled directed graphs are introduced as a means for describing conceptual structures in formal terms. A large number of concepts from directed graph theory apply to conceptual structure representations under this interpretation.
