Edges

An edge, or assertion, is a unit of knowledge in ConceptNet. It tells us a particular relation between natural-language terms, according to a particular source. (See Relations.)

Each edge is represented as a data structure with named fields, which would be called a "dictionary" in Python or an "object" in JavaScript.

Fields of assertions

An assertion contains the following fields:

• uri (called @id in the Linked Data API): a unique URI for the assertion being expressed
• rel: the URI of the predicate (relation) of this assertion.
• start: the URI of the first argument of the assertion.
• end: the URI of the second argument of the assertion.
• weight: the strength with which this edge expresses this assertion. A typical weight is 1, but weights can be higher or lower. All weights are positive.
• sources: the sources that, when combined, say that this assertion should be true.
• license: a Creative Commons URI for the license that governs this data. See Copying and sharing ConceptNet.
• dataset: a URI representing the dataset, or the batch of data from a particular source that created this edge.
• surfaceText: the original natural language text that expressed this statement. May be null, because not every statement was derived from natural language input. The locations of the start and end concepts will be marked by surrounding them with double brackets. An example of a surfaceText is "a cat is an animal".

You can see examples of these data structures, with further explanation, in the API documentation.