The DLV System for Knowledge Representation and Reasoning

This paper presents the DLV system, which is widely considered the state-of-the-art implementation of disjunctive logic programming, and addresses several aspects. As for problem solving, we provide a formal definition of its kernel language, function-free disjunctive logic programs (also known as disjunctive datalog), extended by weak constraints, which are a powerful tool to express optimization problems. We then illustrate the usage of DLV as a tool for knowledge representation and reasoning, describing a new declarative programming methodology which allows one to encode complex problems (up to $\Delta^P_3$-complete problems) in a declarative fashion. On the foundational side, we provide a detailed analysis of the computational complexity of the language of DLV, and by deriving new complexity results we chart a complete picture of the complexity of this language and important fragments thereof. Furthermore, we illustrate the general architecture of the DLV system which has been influenced by these results. As for applications, we overview application front-ends which have been developed on top of DLV to solve specific knowledge representation tasks, and we briefly describe the main international projects investigating the potential of the system for industrial exploitation. Finally, we report about thorough experimentation and benchmarking, which has been carried out to assess the efficiency of the system. The experimental results confirm the solidity of DLV and highlight its potential for emerging application areas like knowledge management and information integration.Comment: 56 pages, 9 figures, 6 table

Multiple Conclusion Rules in Logics with the Disjunction Property

We prove that for the intermediate logics with the disjunction property any basis of admissible rules can be reduced to a basis of admissible m-rules (multiple-conclusion rules), and every basis of admissible m-rules can be reduced to a basis of admissible rules. These results can be generalized to a broad class of logics including positive logic and its extensions, Johansson logic, normal extensions of S4, n-transitive logics and intuitionistic modal logics

On formal aspects of the epistemic approach to paraconsistency

This paper reviews the central points and presents some recent developments of the epistemic approach to paraconsistency in terms of the preservation of evidence. Two formal systems are surveyed, the basic logic of evidence (BLE) and the logic of evidence and truth (LET J ), designed to deal, respectively, with evidence and with evidence and truth. While BLE is equivalent to Nelson’s logic N4, it has been conceived for a different purpose. Adequate valuation semantics that provide decidability are given for both BLE and LET J . The meanings of the connectives of BLE and LET J , from the point of view of preservation of evidence, is explained with the aid of an inferential semantics. A formalization of the notion of evidence for BLE as proposed by M. Fitting is also reviewed here. As a novel result, the paper shows that LET J is semantically characterized through the so-called Fidel structures. Some opportunities for further research are also discussed

Syntactic Computation as Labelled Deduction: WH a case study

This paper addresses the question "Why do WH phenomena occur with the particular cluster of properties observed across languages -- long-distance dependencies, WH-in situ, partial movement constructions, reconstruction, crossover etc." These phenomena have been analysed by invoking a number of discrete principles and categories, but have so far resisted a unified treatment. The explanation proposed is set within a model of natural language understanding in context, where the task of understanding is taken to be the incremental building of a structure over which the semantic content is defined. The formal model is a composite of a labelled type-deduction system, a modal tree logic, and a set of rules for describing the process of interpreting the string as a set of transition states. A dynamic concept of syntax results, in which in addition to an output structure associated with each string (analogous to the level of LF), there is in addition an explicit meta-level description of the process whereby this incremental process takes place. This paper argues that WH-related phenomena can be unified by adopting this dynamic perspective. The main focus of the paper is on WH-initial structures, WH in situ structures, partial movement phenomena, and crossover phenomena. In each case, an analysis is proposed which emerges from the general characterisatioan of WH structures without construction-specific stipulation.Articl

Super Logic Programs

The Autoepistemic Logic of Knowledge and Belief (AELB) is a powerful nonmonotic formalism introduced by Teodor Przymusinski in 1994. In this paper, we specialize it to a class of theories called `super logic programs'. We argue that these programs form a natural generalization of standard logic programs. In particular, they allow disjunctions and default negation of arbibrary positive objective formulas. Our main results are two new and powerful characterizations of the static semant ics of these programs, one syntactic, and one model-theoretic. The syntactic fixed point characterization is much simpler than the fixed point construction of the static semantics for arbitrary AELB theories. The model-theoretic characterization via Kripke models allows one to construct finite representations of the inherently infinite static expansions. Both characterizations can be used as the basis of algorithms for query answering under the static semantics. We describe a query-answering interpreter for super programs which we developed based on the model-theoretic characterization and which is available on the web.Comment: 47 pages, revised version of the paper submitted 10/200