ROSS User's Guide and Reference Manual (Version 1.0)

The ROSS method is a new approach in the area of knowledge representation that is useful for many artificial intelligence and natural language understanding representation and reasoning tasks. (ROSS stands for "Representation", "Ontology", "Structure", "Star" language). ROSS is a physical symbol-based representational scheme. ROSS provides a complex model for the declarative representation of physical structure and for the representation of processes and causality. From the metaphysical perspective, the ROSS view of external reality involves a 4D model, wherein discrete single-time-point unit-sized locations with states are the basis for all objects, processes and aspects that can be modeled. ROSS includes a language called "Star" for the specification of ontology classes. The ROSS method also includes a formal scheme called the "instance model". Instance models are used in the area of natural language meaning representation to represent situations. This document is an in-depth specification of the ROSS method.