dimensional situations containing objects (Figure 1). Situations can be interpreted with respect to objects contained and spatial relationships holding between these objects. The differences between situations imply one or more actions capable of transforming one situation into another. Figure 1 depicts a rewrite rule containing cars, traffic lights, and roads. One possible interpretation for t...

A fundamental debate in the machine learning of language has been the role of prior knowledge in the learning process. Purely nativist approaches, such as the Principles and Parameters model, build parameterized linguistic generalizations directly into the learning system. Purely empirical approaches use a general, domain-independent learning rule (Error Back-Propagation, InstanceBased Generali...

KURE is a Haskell hosted Domain Specific Language (DSL) for writing transformation systems based on rewrite strategies. When writing transformation systems, a significant amount of engineering effort goes into setting up plumbing to make sure that specific rewrite rules can fire. Systems like Stratego and Strafunski provide most of this plumbing as infrastructure, allowing the DSL user to focus...

Rewrite systems axe collections of directed equations (rules) used to compute by repeatedly replacing subterms in a given formula until a simplest form possible (normal form) is obtained. Many formula manipulation systems such as REDUCE or MAGSYMA use equations for simplification in this manner. Canonical (i.e., terminating Church-Rosser) rewrite systems have the property that all equal terms (...