We define an order independent version of default unification on typed feature structures. The operation is one where default information in a feature structure typed with a more specific type, will override default information in a feature structure typed with a more general type, where specificity is defined by the subtyping relation in the type hierarchy. The operation is also able to handle feature structures where reentrancies are default. We provide a formal semantics, prove order independence and demonstrate the utility (...) of this version of default unification in several linguistic applications. First, we show how it can be used to define multiple orthogonal default inheritance in the lexicon in a fully declarative fashion. Secondly, we show how default lexical specifications (introduced via default lexical inheritance) can be made to usefully persist beyond the lexicon and interact with syntagmatic rules. Finally, we outline how persistent default unification might underpin default feature propagation principles and a more restrictive and constraint-based approach to lexical rules. (shrink)

The notion of bilattice was introduced by Ginsberg, and further examined by Fitting, as a general framework for many applications. In the present paper we develop proof systems, which correspond to bilattices in an essential way. For this goal we introduce the notion of logical bilattices. We also show how they can be used for efficient inferences from possibly inconsistent data. For this we incorporate certain ideas of Kifer and Lozinskii, which happen to suit well the context of our work. (...) The outcome are paraconsistent logics with a lot of desirable properties.1. (shrink)

Classical fixpoint semantics for logic programs is based on the TP immediate consequence operator. The Kripke/Kleene, three-valued, semantics uses ΦP, which extends TP to Kleene’s strong three-valued logic. Both these approaches generalize to cover logic programming systems based on a wide class of logics, provided only that the underlying structure be that of a bilattice. This was presented in earlier papers. Recently well-founded semantics has become influential for classical logic programs. We show how the well-founded approach also extends naturally to (...) the same family of bilatticebased programming languages that the earlier fixpoint approaches extended to. Doing so provides a natural semantics for logic programming systems that have already been proposed, as well as for a large number that are of only theoretical interest. And finally, doing so simplifies the proofs of basic results about the well-founded semantics, by stripping away inessential details. (shrink)

Bilattices, introduced by M. Ginsberg, constitute an elegant family of multiple-valued logics. Those meeting certain natural conditions have provided the basis for the semantics of a family of logic programming languages. Now we consider further restrictions on bilattices, to narrow things down to logic programming languages that can, at least in principle, be implemented. Appropriate bilattice background information is presented, so the paper is relatively self-contained.

Kleene’s well-known strong three-valued logic is shown to be one of a family of logics with similar mathematical properties. These logics are produced by an intuitively natural construction. The resulting logics have direct relationships with bilattices. In addition they possess mathematical features that lend themselves well to semantical constructions based on fixpoint procedures, as in logic programming.

The family of all stable models for a logic program has a surprisingly simple overall structure, once two naturally occurring orderings are made explicit. In a so-called knowledge ordering based on degree of definedness, every logic program P has a smallest stable model, sk P — it is the well-founded model. There is also a dual largest stable model, S k P, which has not been considered before. There is another ordering based on degree of truth. Taking the meet and (...) the join, in the truth ordering, of the two extreme stable models sk P and S.. (shrink)

Kleene’s strong three-valued logic extends naturally to a four-valued logic proposed by Belnap. We introduce a guard connective into Belnap’s logic and consider a few of its properties. Then we show that by using it four-valued analogs of Kleene’s weak three-valued logic, and the asymmetric logic of Lisp are also available. We propose an extension of these ideas to the family of distributive bilattices. Finally we show that for bilinear bilattices the extensions do not produce any new equivalences.