Bounded Descriptions for Knowledge Graph Traversal by Language Models

A bounded description of a resource is a useful default subgraph that represents relevant information. When accessing RDF knowledge graphs, bounded descriptions are returned for SPARQL DESCRIBE queries or for HTTP GET requests on Linked Data. Concise Bounded Description (CBD) is the de facto default, but only provides conditional reachability of connected resources, limiting its usefulness for knowledge graph traversal. This paper outlines alternative bounded description specifications consisting of chained and parallel combinations of construction steps. Furthermore, characteristics of bounded description specifications are introduced, including ontology awareness, applicability, and reachability. The evaluation challenges the traversal of a knowledge graph with n-ary relations using retrieved bounded descriptions. Results confirm limitations of the CBD specification, highlight the impact of reachability, and bring attention to ontology-aware and set-specific bounded descriptions.