Skip to main content
SpringerLink
Log in
Book cover

Conference of the Canadian Society for Computational Studies of Intelligence

Canadian AI 1996: Advances in Artifical Intelligence pp 336–348Cite as

Reference constraints and individual level inheritance

  • Knowledge Representation IV: Reasoning
  • Conference paper
  • First Online:

  • 131 Accesses

Part of the book series: Lecture Notes in Computer Science ((LNAI,volume 1081))

Abstract

Equality constraints partition logical variables into coreference classes, each of which denotes an individual (which may be unspecified or partially specified) in a domain of discourse. These classes, however, are unrelated to each other. We propose reference constraints as a generalization of equality constraints, allowing the specification of a partial ordering among coreference classes. This leads to the notion of individual level inheritance, where an individual denoted by a variable may inherit properties from another individual which is denoted by a subsuming variable in the partial order. A variety of systems, especially systems reasoning in ambiguous domains, would benefit from an efficient, formally based implementation of reference constraints and individual level inheritance.

This is a preview of subscription content, log in via an institution.

Preview

Unable to display preview. Download preview PDF.

Unable to display preview. Download preview PDF.

References

  1. H. Aït-Kaci, R. Boyer, P. Lincoln, and R. Nasr. Efficient implementation of lattice operations. ACM Transactions on Programming Languages, 11(1):115–146, 1989.

    Google Scholar 

  2. H. Aït-Kaci and A. Podelski. Towards a meaning of LIFE. Journal of Logic Programming, 16(3/4):195, 1993.

    Google Scholar 

  3. J. Allen. Natural Language Understanding. Benjamin/Cummings Pub. Co, Redwood City, CA, 2 edition, 1995.

    Google Scholar 

  4. R. J. Brachman. What IS-A is and isn't: An analysis of taxonomic links in semantic networks. IEEE Computer, 16:30–36, 1983.

    Google Scholar 

  5. L. Cardelli. A semantics of multiple inheritance. In G. Kahn, D. MacQueen, and G. Plotkin, editors, Semantics of Data Types. Springer Verlag, Berlin, 1984.

    Google Scholar 

  6. Y. Caseau. Efficient handling of multiple inheritance hierarchies. ACM SIGPLAN Notices, 8(28):271, October 1993.

    Google Scholar 

  7. A. G. Cohn. Completing sort hierarchies. Computers and Mathematics with Applications, 23(2–9):477–491, 1992.

    Google Scholar 

  8. B. A. Davey and H. A. Priestley. Introduction to Lattices and Order. Cambridge University Press, Cambridge, England, 1990.

    Google Scholar 

  9. A. Fall. The foundations of taxonomic encoding. Technical Report 94-20, Simon Fraser University CSS/LCCR, 1994.

    Google Scholar 

  10. A. Fall. An abstract framework for taxonomic encoding. In Proc. First Int. Symposium on Knowledge Retrieval, Use and Storage for Efficiency, Santa Cruz, 1995.

    Google Scholar 

  11. A. Fall. Sparse logical terms. Applied Mathematics Letters, 8(5):11–16, 1995.

    Google Scholar 

  12. J. Horty, R. Thomason, and D. Touretzky. A skeptical theory of inheritance in nonmonotonic semantic networks. Artificial Intelligence, 42:311–348, 1990.

    Google Scholar 

  13. S. Le Huitouze. A new data structure for implementing extensions to Prolog. In International Workshop on Programming Language Implementation and Logic Programming (PLILP90), LNCS 456, 1990.

    Google Scholar 

  14. J. C. Reynolds. Transformational systems and the algebraic structure of atomic formulas. In Machine Intelligence 5. Edinburgh Univ. Press, Edinburgh, UK, 1970.

    Google Scholar 

  15. N. K. Simpkins and P. Hancox. Chart parsing in prolog. New Generation Computing, 8(2):113–138, 1990.

    Google Scholar 

  16. P. Tarau, V. Dahl, and A. Fall. Backtrackable state with linear assumptions, continuations and hidden accumulator grammars. In Workshop on the Future of Logic Programming, International Logic Programming Symposium (ILPS'95), 1995.

    Google Scholar 

  17. D. S. Warren. Memoing for logic programs. Communications of the ACM, 35(3):93–111, March 1992.

    Google Scholar 

  18. W. A. Woods. What's in a link: Foundations for semantic networks. In Representation and Understanding. Academic Press, Orlando, Florida, 1975. Reprinted in Readings in Knowledge Representation, R. J. Brachman and H. J. Levesque (Eds.), Morgan Kaufmann, Los Altos, CA, 1985.

    Google Scholar 

  19. W. A. Woods and J. G. Schmolze. The KL-ONE family. Computers and Mathematics with Applications, 23(2–5):133–177, 1992.

    Google Scholar 

Download references

Author information

Authors and Affiliations

  1. School of Computing Science, Simon Fraser University, V5A-1S6, Burnaby, B.C., Canada

    Andrew Fall

Authors
  1. Andrew Fall
    View author publications

    You can also search for this author in PubMed Google Scholar

Editor information

Gordon McCalla

Rights and permissions

Reprints and permissions

Copyright information

© 1996 Springer-Verlag Berlin Heidelberg

About this paper

Cite this paper

Fall, A. (1996). Reference constraints and individual level inheritance. In: McCalla, G. (eds) Advances in Artifical Intelligence. Canadian AI 1996. Lecture Notes in Computer Science, vol 1081. Springer, Berlin, Heidelberg. https://doi.org/10.1007/3-540-61291-2_63

Download citation

  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/3-540-61291-2_63

  • Published:

  • Publisher Name: Springer, Berlin, Heidelberg

  • Print ISBN: 978-3-540-61291-9

  • Online ISBN: 978-3-540-68450-3

  • eBook Packages: Springer Book Archive

Publish with us

Policies and ethics

Search

Navigation