Geospatial Narratives and their Spatio-Temporal Dynamics: Commonsense Reasoning for High-level Analyses in Geographic Information Systems

The modelling, analysis, and visualisation of dynamic geospatial phenomena has been identified as a key developmental challenge for next-generation Geographic Information Systems (GIS). In this context, the envisaged paradigmatic extensions to contemporary foundational GIS technology raises fundamental questions concerning the ontological, formal representational, and (analytical) computational methods that would underlie their spatial information theoretic underpinnings. We present the conceptual overview and architecture for the development of high-level semantic and qualitative analytical capabilities for dynamic geospatial domains. Building on formal methods in the areas of commonsense reasoning, qualitative reasoning, spatial and temporal representation and reasoning, reasoning about actions and change, and computational models of narrative, we identify concrete theoretical and practical challenges that accrue in the context of formal reasoning about `space, events, actions, and change'. With this as a basis, and within the backdrop of an illustrated scenario involving the spatio-temporal dynamics of urban narratives, we address specific problems and solutions techniques chiefly involving `qualitative abstraction', `data integration and spatial consistency', and `practical geospatial abduction'. From a broad topical viewpoint, we propose that next-generation dynamic GIS technology demands a transdisciplinary scientific perspective that brings together Geography, Artificial Intelligence, and Cognitive Science. Keywords: artificial intelligence; cognitive systems; human-computer interaction; geographic information systems; spatio-temporal dynamics; computational models of narrative; geospatial analysis; geospatial modelling; ontology; qualitative spatial modelling and reasoning; spatial assistance systemsComment: ISPRS International Journal of Geo-Information (ISSN 2220-9964); Special Issue on: Geospatial Monitoring and Modelling of Environmental Change}. IJGI. Editor: Duccio Rocchini. (pre-print of article in press

Preventing false temporal implicatures: interactive defaults for text generation

Introduction Given the causal and temporal relations between events in a knowledge base, what are the ways they can be described in text? Elsewhere, we have argued that during interpretation, the reader-hearer H must infer certain temporal information from knowledge about the world, language use and pragmatics. It is generally agreed that processes of Gricean implicature help determine the interpretation of text in context. But without a notion of logical consequence to underwrite them, the inferences---often defeasible in nature---will appear arbitrary, and unprincipled. Hence, we have explored the requirements on a formal model of temporal implicature, and outlined one possible nonmonotonic framework for discourse interpretation (Lascarides & Asher [1991], Lascarides & Oberlander [1992a]). Here, we argue that if the writer-speaker S is to tailor text to H , then discourse generation can be informed by a similar formal model o

Abductive Inference During Update: the German Preposition "mit"

No abstract

Issues in Cue Phrase Implicature

Knott's empirical study of cue phrases has resulted in a taxonomic classification of some 150 cue phrases. The taxonomy can be viewed as a partial ordering on the set of phrases, and hence we can view cue phrase selection in terms of scalar implicature, following Hirschberg. We draw out some of the immediate consequences of this view, including the problematic status of the conventional/conversational distinction, and the proper treatment of high-level cue phrases. We conclude by considering how to test empirically some of the new predictions. Introduction The call for papers raised a number of questions, two of which we are directly addressing in new work: Coherence How does conversational implicature relate to other discourse phenomena, e.g., coherence and discourse expectations? Data Are there classes of discourse phenomena (e.g., ellipsis) which it would be advantageous to analyse as types of conversational implicature although they are not currently recognised as such in the co..

An argument for definitional adequacy of RESULT and NARRATION

Discourse relations link two different discourse units into a compound unit, and it is the presence of such relations that gives a discourse coherence. For example, the relations RESULT and NARRATION are responsible for the perceived "narrative progression" of the events described in the discourse. Building on Hobbs (1985) and Kehler (2002), we use the definitions of RESULT and NARRATION to derive constraints that pertain to the internal structure of discourse units, and we argue that the plausibility of these constraints lends a new type of support for the definitions that we propose

Events states and times

This monograph investigates the temporal interpretation of narrative discourse in two parts. The theme of the first part is narrative progression. It begins with a case study of the adverb ‘now’ and its interaction with the meaning of tense. The case study motivates an ontological distinction between events, states and times and proposes that ‘now’ seeks a prominent state that holds throughout the time described by the tense. Building on prior research, prominence is shown to be influenced by principles of discourse coherence and two coherence principles, NARRATION and RESULT, are given a formally explicit characterization. The key innovation is a new method for testing the definitional adequacy of NARRATION and RESULT, namely by an abductive argument. This contribution opens a new way of thinking about how eventive and stative descriptions contribute to the perceived narrative progression in a discourse. The theme of the second part of the monograph is the semantics and pragmatics of tense. A key innovation is that the present and past tenses are treated as scalar alternatives, a view that is motivated by adopting a particular hypothesis concerning stative predication. The proposed analysis accounts for tense in both matrix clauses and in complements of propositional attitudes, where the notorious double access reading arises. This reading is explored as part of a corpus study that provides a glimpse of how tense semantics interacts with Gricean principles and at-issueness. Several cross-linguistic predictions of the analysis are considered, including their consequences for the Sequence of Tense phenomenon and the Upper Limit Constraint. Finally, a hypothesis is provided about how tense meanings compose with temporal adverbs and verb phrases. Two influential analysis of viewpoint aspect are then compared in light of the hypothesis