Provenance-Enhanced Statements in Knowledge Graphs
Authors: Fabio Vitali, Valentina Pasqual
Organizations: University of Bologna, Italy
Abstract
Provenance-enhanced statements of the form "according to X, φ" are pervasive in contemporary knowledge graphs, especially in domains where graph content primarily represents claims, interpretations, and hypotheses (\emph{capta}) rather than observer-independent facts (\emph{data}). Current provenance models can record who asserted what, but they typically treat provenance as semantically neutral, leaving underspecified how attributed claims relate to factual commitment, to one another, and to reasoning. In this paper we introduce DEC, a framework that interprets provenance predicates as indicators of epistemic stance and groups provenance-homogeneous sets of statements into \emph{cognitive worlds}. Drawing on cognitive modal logics (doxastic, epistemic, and conjectural), DEC characterizes locality, rationality, and controlled permeation between cognitive worlds and a distinguished factual core ("reality"), thereby enabling principled reasoning over attributed content without collapsing disagreements into inconsistencies. We formalize a DEC interpretation for RDF datasets that is conservative over RDF~1.2 semantics, clarify the role of intensionality and identity (including the Superman paradox), and illustrate the approach on common Semantic Web representations (named graphs, quoted triples/RDF-star, and reification). Finally, we describe our prototype DEC reasoner implemented as a Fuseki dataset module, supporting controlled factualisation and explicit detection of disagreements and delusions.
Retrieval-Augmented Generation can improve factuality by grounding answers in external evidence, but Agentic GraphRAG complicates what it means for citations to be faithful. In these systems, an agent explores a knowledge graph before producing an answer and a small set of citations. We frame citation faithfulness as a trajectory-level problem: final citations should not only support the answer, but also account for the graph traversal, structure, and visited-but-uncited entities that may influence it. Through controlled ablation experiments, we compare the effects of isolating, removing, and masking cited and uncited graph entities. Our results show that cited evidence is often necessary, as removing it substantially changes answers and reduces accuracy. However, citations are not sufficient, because accurate answers can also depend on uncited traversal context and surrounding graph structure. These findings suggest that citation evaluation in Agentic GraphRAG should move beyond source support toward provenance over the broader retrieval trajectory.
Riccardo Terrenzi, Maximilian von Zastrow, Serkan Ayvaz
Knowledge Graphs are pivotal for semantic data integration. The real-world data they model is often inherently uncertain. Within knowledge graphs, uncertainty manifests in three distinct levels: imprecise attribute values, probabilistic triple existence, and incomplete schema knowledge. However, current Semantic Web standards lack native support for reasoning over such uncertainty, and naïve extensions often incur computational intractability. In this thesis, I aim to develop a modular framework that addresses each level through tailored techniques: (1) defining probabilistic literals and a corresponding query algebra for continuous attributes; (2) a compilation-based framework transforming SPARQL provenance into tractable probabilistic circuits for uncertain triples; and (3) topology-aware geometric embeddings for statistical schema reasoning. The central hypothesis is that specialized reasoning mechanisms, namely algebraic, logical, and geometric approaches, can reconcile semantic precision with computational tractability.
Knowledge graphs can guide large language models (LLMs) reasoning, but the graph seen by a system is usually a retrieved, linked, temporally scoped, and incomplete evidence state rather than a complete account of truth. We develop a theoretical perspective on grounding observable LLM trajectories under such incomplete graph evidence.The evidence state induces entity anchors, typed relation residuals, path energies, and support regions, while the language model supplies a prior over candidate trajectories. We show that, under open-world incompleteness, no hard rule based only on the observed state can both reject every false unsupported trajectory and retain every true-but-unobserved one.We then characterize soft grounding as a KL-regularized deformation of the LLM prior: finite slack preserves support for unsupported but non-contradicted trajectories, whereas hard conditioning appears as an infinite-penalty limit.The framework also yields stability bounds under evidence perturbations and clarifies the constraint regimes appropriate for GraphRAG, KGQA, graph agents, constrained decoding, and faithful generation. The claims are evidence-relative: KG compatibility is treated as declared support, not factual truth.