Our goal is to generalize the well known bottom-up, set-oriented query evaluation for deductive databases in two aspects: First, we consider arbitrary clauses as rules in the database, not only Horn clauses or clauses with stratified negation. This allows to represent disjunctive information, in the database as well as in answers to queries. We utilize NF2 relations for modelling sets of disjun...

This contribution reviews (some of) the history of analysis by synthesis, an approach to perception and comprehension articulated in the 1950s. Whereas much research has focused on bottom-up, feed-forward, inductive mechanisms, analysis by synthesis as a heuristic model emphasizes a balance of bottom-up and knowledge-driven, top-down, predictive steps in speech perception and language comprehen...