Progressive Prefix-Memory Tuning for Complex Logical Query Answering on Knowledge Graphs

Abstract

Conducting complex logical queries over knowledge graphs remains a significant challenge. Recent research has successfully leveraged Pre-trained Language Models (PLMs) to tackle Knowledge Graph Complex Query Answering (KGCQA) tasks, which is attributed to PLMs' ability to comprehend logical semantics of queries through context learning. However, existing PLM-based KGCQA methods usually overlook the harm of disordered syntax or fragmented contexts within a serialized query, posing the problem of “impossible language” to limit PLMs in grasping the logical semantics. To address this problem, we propose a Progressive Prefix-Memory Tuning (PPMT) framework for KGCQA tasks, which effectively rectifies erroneous segments in serialized queries to assist PLMs in query answering. First, we propose a prefix-memory rectification mechanism embedded in a PLM module. This mechanism assigns rectification parameters in memory stores to polish the language segments of entities, relations, and queries through specific prefixes. To further capture the logical semantics in queries, we design a progressive fine-tuning strategy, which optimizes our model through a conditional gradient update process guided by knowledge translation constraints. Extensive experiments on widely used KGCQA benchmarks demonstrate the significant superiority of PPMT in terms of HR@3 and MRR. Our codes are available at https://github.com/lazyloafer/PPMT.