"Not not bad" is not "bad": A distributional account of negation

With the increasing empirical success of distributional models of compositional semantics, it is timely to consider the types of textual logic that such models are capable of capturing. In this paper, we address shortcomings in the ability of current models to capture logical operations such as negation. As a solution we propose a tripartite formulation for a continuous vector space representation of semantics and subsequently use this representation to develop a formal compositional notion of negation within such models.Comment: 9 pages, to appear in Proceedings of the 2013 Workshop on Continuous Vector Space Models and their Compositionalit

Nominal Logic Programming

Nominal logic is an extension of first-order logic which provides a simple foundation for formalizing and reasoning about abstract syntax modulo consistent renaming of bound names (that is, alpha-equivalence). This article investigates logic programming based on nominal logic. We describe some typical nominal logic programs, and develop the model-theoretic, proof-theoretic, and operational semantics of such programs. Besides being of interest for ensuring the correct behavior of implementations, these results provide a rigorous foundation for techniques for analysis and reasoning about nominal logic programs, as we illustrate via examples.Comment: 46 pages; 19 page appendix; 13 figures. Revised journal submission as of July 23, 200

A Categorical View on Algebraic Lattices in Formal Concept Analysis

Formal concept analysis has grown from a new branch of the mathematical field of lattice theory to a widely recognized tool in Computer Science and elsewhere. In order to fully benefit from this theory, we believe that it can be enriched with notions such as approximation by computation or representability. The latter are commonly studied in denotational semantics and domain theory and captured most prominently by the notion of algebraicity, e.g. of lattices. In this paper, we explore the notion of algebraicity in formal concept analysis from a category-theoretical perspective. To this end, we build on the the notion of approximable concept with a suitable category and show that the latter is equivalent to the category of algebraic lattices. At the same time, the paper provides a relatively comprehensive account of the representation theory of algebraic lattices in the framework of Stone duality, relating well-known structures such as Scott information systems with further formalisms from logic, topology, domains and lattice theory.Comment: 36 page

On Automated Lemma Generation for Separation Logic with Inductive Definitions

Separation Logic with inductive definitions is a well-known approach for deductive verification of programs that manipulate dynamic data structures. Deciding verification conditions in this context is usually based on user-provided lemmas relating the inductive definitions. We propose a novel approach for generating these lemmas automatically which is based on simple syntactic criteria and deterministic strategies for applying them. Our approach focuses on iterative programs, although it can be applied to recursive programs as well, and specifications that describe not only the shape of the data structures, but also their content or their size. Empirically, we find that our approach is powerful enough to deal with sophisticated benchmarks, e.g., iterative procedures for searching, inserting, or deleting elements in sorted lists, binary search tress, red-black trees, and AVL trees, in a very efficient way