Semantic representations using structural ontology for assistant systems

One or more computer-readable non-transitory storage media embodying software that comprises instructions that when executed by one or more processors, cause the one or more processors to:

• receive, by an assistant xbot from a client system associated with a user, a user input comprising a natural-language utterance;
• determine a semantic representation of the user input based on a structural ontology, wherein the structural ontology defines a labeling syntax for parsing the natural-language utterance to semantic units comprising a plurality of actions, objects, and attributes, and wherein the semantic representation embeds at least one object within at least one action and declares at least one attribute of the at least one embedded object to be acted upon;
• send, to an agent, a request for executing a task corresponding to the user input, wherein the request is based on the semantic representation;
• receive, from the agent, results generated by the agent from executing the task, wherein the results are mapped to a structure determined by the structural ontology;
• and
• send, from the assistant xbot to the client system, instructions for presenting a response to the user input, wherein the response is based on the results.

A system comprising:

• one or more processors;
• and a non-transitory memory coupled to the processors comprising instructions executable by the processors, the processors operable when executing the instructions to:
• receive, by an assistant xbot from a client system associated with a user, a user input comprising a natural-language utterance;
• determine a semantic representation of the user input based on a structural ontology, wherein the structural ontology defines a labeling syntax for parsing the natural-language utterance to semantic units comprising a plurality of actions, objects, and attributes, and wherein the semantic representation embeds at least one object within at least one action and declares at least one attribute of the at least one embedded object to be acted upon;
• send, to an agent, a request for executing a task corresponding to the user input, wherein the request is based on the semantic representation;
• receive, from the agent, results generated by the agent from executing the task, wherein the results are mapped to a structure determined by the structural ontology;
• and
• send, from the assistant xbot to the client system, instructions for presenting a response to the user input, wherein the response is based on the results.