The goal of the paper is to discuss how situation-bound utterances (Kecskes, 1997, 2000, 2003) relate to pragmemes (Mey, 2001) that refer to generalized pragmatic acts. In pragmatic interpretation the cognitivephilosophical line of research appears to put more emphasis on the proposition expressed (e.g. Horn, 2005; Levinson, 2000) while the socio-cultural interactional line (e.g. Verschueren, 1...

A fundamental aspect of general reasoning about physical systems is qualitative reasoning about continuous processes. The situation calculus is proposed as a framework for qualitative reasoning with some desirable properties that are less evident in the traditional framework, qualitative physics. However, in order to handle qualitative reasoning about continuous properties, we extend the concur...

A narrative is a course of real events about which we might have incomplete information. Formalisms for reasoning about action may be broadly divided into those which are narrative-based, such as the Event Calculus of Kowalski and Sergot, and those which reason on the level of hypothetical sequences of actions, in particular the Situation Calculus. This paper bridges the gap between these types...

Concurrent events are treated merely by not forbidding them. Narrative is treated as a collection of situations and events and relations among them. Narrative is easier than planning, because it does not require that the effects of events be guaranteed. Prediction is harder than planning, because it requires that the actions be inferred from the motives of the actors.

We consider the problem of planning in complex domains where actions are stochastic, non-instantaneous, may occur concurrently, and time is represented explicitly. Our approach is based on the situation calculus based language Golog. Instead of general search for a sequence of actions, as in classical planning, we consider the problem of computing a deterministic, sequential program (with stoch...

The development of cultural psychiatry is reviewed at different stages historically in contemporary China during the past two and a half decades. Comments are made about the social, political, and professional reasons why the development of cultural psychiatry has been delayed, and what needs to be done to improve the situation in the near future, particularly to expand the concern from the min...

Traditional Qiang culture is the sum of all civilizations created by Qiang people in the long historical development of the national minority, and is an important component of Chinese civilization. However, traditional Qiang culture suffered from the attack of the great 5.12 Wenchuan Earthquake in the more and more vigorous process of industralization and globalization nowadays. Based on diffic...