The complexity of the subsumption problem in description logics can vary widely with the choice of the syntactic fragment and the semantic interpretation. In this paper we show that the constructive semantics of concept descriptions, which includes the classical descriptive semantics as a special case, offers exponential speed-up in the existentialdisjunctive fragment UL of ALC.

In BBN's natural language understanding and generation system (Janus), we have used a hybrid approach to representation, employing an intensional logic for the representation of the semantics of utterances and a taxonomic language with formal semantics for specification of descriptive constants and axioms relating them. Remarkably, 99.9% of 7,000 vocabulary items in our natural language applica...

We introduce a new order-topological semantics for the positive modal mu-calculus over modal compact Hausdorff spaces, which are generalizations of descriptive frames. We define Sahlqvist sequents in this language, prove Esakia’s lemma and Sahlqvist preservation theorem for this semantics. We show that every Sahlqvist sequent has a frame correspondent in first-order logic with fixed-point opera...

Hybrid EL-TBoxes combine general concept inclusions (GCIs), which are interpreted with descriptive semantics, with cyclic concept definitions, which are interpreted with greatest fixpoint (gfp) semantics. We introduce a proof-theoretic approach that yields a polynomial-time decision procedure for subsumption in EL w.r.t. hybrid TBoxes, and present preliminary experimental results regarding the ...

We introduce a descriptive approach to deene static semantics in the framework of Montages. It preserves readability and convenience of speciication and guarantees eecient computation of the typing.

Phrasal semantics is concerned with how the meaning of a sentence is composed both from the meaning of the constituent words, and from extra meaning contained within the structural organization of the sentence itself. In this context, grammatical constructions correspond to form-meaning mappings that essentially capture this “extra” meaning and allow its representation. The current research exa...

We would like in this note to offer a criticism of the use of mathematics in most of the current work in the semantics of programming languages. Our complaint is not the wrong amount of mathematics (either too little or too much) is being used, or that the wrong kind is being used, but rather than mathematics is being used in the wrong way. In semantics, and computer science as a whole, there h...

ClassXX +TemplateMethod()+Others()ConcreteClassXX Figure 1.19 Example design instance in template method pattern The following theorem states that if we can prove [[M ]] → Spec′(P ) inFOPL for model M and pattern P , then every system that is an instance ofM must conform to pattern P . The proof is omitted for the sake of space.Theorem 1.2 Suppose that Spec′(P ) is a correct...

The representation of terminological knowledge may naturally lead to terminological cycles. In addition to descriptive semantics, the meaning of cyclic terminologies can also be captured by xed-point semantics. To gain a more profound understanding of these semantics and to obtain inference algorithms for inconsistency, subsumption , and related inference tasks, this paper provides automata the...