Topic-Focus Articulation from the Semantic Point of View

In this paper, we would like to describe two logical systems — Tichy's transparent intensional logic and Girard's linear logic. Transparent intensional logic is a method of logical analysis of natural language, which represents expressive system, independent of chosen source language. Our research vision is to connect this method with linear logic. In future research, this connection would allow us to apply Ludics theory principles (which is the extension of the linear logic) to natural language sentences, which puts them in a logical time and space.

We introduce a new theory of concepts conceived as structured abstract entities. The theory is based on the key notion of Transparent Intensional Logic (TIL), known as TIL construction. The rich procedural semantics of TIL makes it possible to explicitly analyze all the semantically salient features of natural language expressions. We illustrate how to make use of TIL theory of concepts in distinguishing analytical and empirical concepts, and particular kinds of necessities. We also deal with a rigorous specification of requisite relations between intensions such as properties. Finally, ontology is characterised as a relatively stable part of the system that should play an integrating role. We show how to make use of TIL rich theory in specification of the content of ontologies in a multi-agent system.

This paper addresses the mereological problem of the unity of structured propositions. The problem is how to make multiple parts interact such that they form a whole that is ultimately related to truth and falsity. The solution I propose is based on a Platonist variant of procedural semantics. I think of procedures as abstract entities that detail a logical path from input to output. Procedures are modeled on a function/argument logic, but are not functions (mappings). Instead they are higher-order, fine-grained structures. I identify propositions with particular kinds of molecular procedures containing multiple sub-procedures as parts. Procedures are among the basic entities of my ontology, while propositions are derived entities. The core of a structured proposition is the procedure of predication, which is an instance of the procedure of functional application. The main thesis I defend is that procedurally conceived propositions are their own unifiers detailing how their parts interact so as to form a unit. They are not unified by one of their constituents, e.g., a relation or a sub-procedure, on pain of regress. The relevant procedural semantics is Transparent Intensional Logic, a hyperintensional, typed $$\lambda $$ -calculus, whose $$\lambda $$ -terms express four different kinds of procedures. While demonstrating how the theory works, I place my solution in a wider historical and systematic context.

This paper describes the design of a knowledge representation and reasoning system, named Dolphin, which is based on higher-order temporal Transparent Intensional Logic (TIL). An intelligent agent (NAM), that is able to read newspaper headlines from specialized internet server and allows users to ask questions about various world situations is chosen to demonstrate Dolphin features. Temporal aspects play an essential role in natural language therefore we present how this phenomenon is handled in the system. Reasoning capabilities of the agent are divided into three individual strategies and described in the text. As a result we compare NAM answers to one of the most used search engines nowadays.

In this work, we revisit a criterion, originally proposed in Friesecke & Pego (Friesecke & Pego 2004 Nonlinearity17, 207-227. (doi:10.1088/0951715/17/1/013)), for the stability of solitary travelling waves in Hamiltonian, infinite-dimensional lattice dynamical systems. We discuss the implications of this criterion from the point of view of stability theory, both at the level of the spectral analysis of the advance-delay differential equations in the co-travelling frame, as well as at that of the Floquet problem arising when considering the travelling wave as a periodic orbit modulo shift. We establish the correspondence of these perspectives for the pertinent eigenvalue and Floquet multiplier and provide explicit expressions for their dependence on the velocity of the travelling wave in the vicinity of the critical point. Numerical results are used to corroborate the relevant predictions in two different models, where the stability may change twice. Some extensions, generalizations and future directions of this investigation are also discussed.This article is part of the theme issue 'Stability of nonlinear waves and patterns and related topics'.

CONCEPTUAL FOUNDATIONS OF QUANTUM MECHANICS: THE ROLE OF EVIDENCE THEORY, QUANTUM SETS, AND MODAL LOGIC

We analyse the concept of a second-order characterisable structure and divide this concept into two parts—consistency and categoricity—with different strength and nature. We argue that categorical characterisation of mathematical structures in second-order logic is meaningful and possible without assuming that the semantics of second-order logic is defined in set theory. This extends also to the so-called Henkin structures.

In the present paper we argue that the so-called sentence adverbials (typically, adverbs like probably, admittedly ,...) should be generated, in the framework of Functional Generative Description, by means of a special deep case - Complementation of Attitude (CA) on grounds of their special behaviour in the topic-focus articulation (TFA) of a sentence. From the viewpoint of the translation of CA expressions (and also of the multiple occurrence thereof inside a sentence) into a calculus of intensional logic, it should be noted that the TFA properties of CA expressions are directly correlated to the scope properties thereof. Our approach, which is stated in terms of a linguistic theory, serves as a basis for an algorithm of analysis of CA for purposes of a system of man-machine communication without a pre-arranged data base.

The description, from the technical point of view, of each product variant is a distinctive function of configuration systems. The performance of this key function requires, on the part of the company, the elaboration of a large amount of technical information. Consequently, the knowledge required to process such technical information has to be captured within appropriate logical structures. The present chapter: summarizes the main difficulties associated with the organization of technical information, in the case of configurable products; explains the ‘traditional’ approaches used to describe product variants from the technical point of view, illustrating their limitations; discusses the concept of a generic bill of materials, i.e. the logical structure that generally implements the technical model; supplies guidelines for designing generic bills of materials. KeywordsTechnical ModelProduct VariantGeneric ElementProduct FamilyMass CustomizationThese keywords were added by machine and not by the authors. This process is experimental and the keywords may be updated as the learning algorithm improves.

The concept of is now so all-pervasive that few turn their attention to the origin and (initially slow) evolution of the concept as a basic element in science, technology, computing, and even, these days, the social sciences and humanities. Indeed, anyone who considers the development of the notion of information is likely to be restricted to a few great names such as Claude Shannon and Norbert Wiener, or the famous series of Macy Conferences on cybernetics, systems thinking, and related topics. Yet there is a fascinating, and rarely told, pre-history. This paper considers early attempts by German scholars at viewing individuals and societies from what, in retrospect, can be considered an information point of view. Specific areas examined by such scholars are the dilation of the pupil of the eye, a general proto-cybernetic approach to the human body, and feedback in organisms and the state. Such early work was not widely known by later German cyberneticists of the 1940s onwards, but it gradually came to inform their ideas: see in particular Henn [1].

Linear semi-infinite optimization problems (LSIPs) arise in a large number of applications, including functional approximation, robust optimization, optimal control, and duality theory. Whereas in many applications the index set of these inequality constraints is a compact subset of some Euclidean space, the presented survey takes an even more general point of view, where the index set is not equipped with any kind of structure. For the numerical treatment of an optimization problem it is crucial that the problem is stable under perturbations of its defining data. Different stability properties lead to a list of notions for ‘good behavior’ of an LSIP, including semicontinuity properties of feasible and optimal point mappings, different types of ill-posedness, distance to ill-posedness, as well as Lipschitz and metric regularity properties. Marco Lopez and his coauthors have studied these qualitative and quantitative notions extensively during the last fifteen years. Their remarkable results are compiled in the present, comprehensive survey about stability in linear semi-infinite optimization. Since the main questions in the framework of this survey appear to be answered, I would like to take this opportunity and suggest to slightly extend this setting. In fact, while the index set T itself is assumed to be fixed in the present approach, there are at least three possible ways to study LSIPs with parametric index sets.

The authors attempt, as indicated in the preface, to emphasize the position of chemistry in the understanding of the more recent advances in chronic cardiovascular disease. They select certain topics related to chemistry and therapy of chronic cardiovascular disease. The authors, without paying too much attention to chemistry of muscular contraction, myocardial metabolism, or other related topics, stress the problem of chemistry and therapy of chronic heart disease from a practical and applied point of view. In this they have succeeded very well. They discuss the various actions of digitalis and of oral diuretics; they deal with blood clotting mechanisms, anticoagulation, and finally atherosclerosis. It is in this last chapter that they have, in the reviewer's opinion, succeeded best, particularly when they review the mechanism of coronary occlusion. It is true that there are a large number of original articles and review articles which deal with this subject, but it

Multivariate Value at Risk, or MVaR, is defined as the quantile set of a multivariate probability distribution. It has already been introduced and used in the literature under the name of p-Level Efficient Points, or pLEP’s, or briefly p-efficient points. Some of the topics connected with it are surveyed: discrete convexity, algorithmic generation, relation to logconcavity. A related notion: Multivariate Conditional Value at Risk, or MCVaR, is also introduced and some of its properties are explored. Finally, optimization problems, based on these notions, are presented and discussed, from the point of view of convexity and algorithmic solution.

In the study of non CE-mappings on manifolds D. Coram and P. F. Duvall ([CDI]) introduced the notion of approximate fibrations and showed that they have several shape theoretic properties analogous to the properties of Hurewicz fibrations. Generalizing this notion to the case of mapping on compacta, S. Marde~i~ and T. B. Rushing ([MRI]) defined shape fibrations and these maps have come to play an important role in the study of non CE -mappings. The purpose of this paper is to give a survey on shape fibrations and related topics in the fiber shape theoretic point of view. (See [Co] for the survey on approximate fibrations on manifolds.) The paper includes the following topics~ i. the approximate homotopy lifting property 2. fiber shape theory, LeraySerre type spectral sequences 3. movability of maps 4. local movability of maps 5. fiber shape type of Q-manifold bundles. Throughout the paper spaces are locally compact, separable and metrizable and (with some exceptions) maps are proper (the inverse image of each compact set is compact). An ANR is an absolute neighborhood retract for metric spaces and f.p. stands for fiber preserving. For an open cover C of Y we say two maps f , g ~ X ÷ Y are C close and write (f,g) ~ C if for each x ~ X there exists a U ~ C with f(x), g(x) U For shape theory we refer to [MS].

Goethe Yearbook 333 with Euler. The rapprochement with Newton is more convincing in Arnim, who is most interestingly dealt with in chapter five, subtitled "The Galvanic Eye." After chapters dealing with Wordsworth and with Coleridge in relation to Jean Paul and then to Friedrich Schlegel, Goethe returns to figure prominently, if obliquely, in the final one, "Shelley: The 'Traces' oiFaust." The chapters ofThe Damnation of Newton work as self-contained essays linked by related topics and a consistent authorial point of view. Each is stimulating and enjoyable in its own right, and in the aggregate there is much information and insight. That there is no totalizing thesis answering to the titillating title is not to be regretted but appreciated. Burwick provides an exemplary blending of judicious intellectual history and subtle textual interpretation. University of Texas, Austin Jeffrey Barnouw Spaethling, Robert, Music and Mozart in the Life of Goethe. Columbia, S.C: Camden House, 1987 (Studies in German Literature, Linguistics, and Culture, vol. 27). Spaethling's attractively bound monograph is accurately described by its title as a book "about Goethe and the role of music, particularly Mozart's music, in Goethe's life and art" (16). Written for the English-speaking general public (all German quotations are translated), it aims to "illuminate [...] the unique gift that Goethe and Mozart bestowed on their culture and the world" (18). To write it was "a personal need as much as a scholarly challenge" for the author (19), who, in describing the similarities and affinities between Goethe and Mozart, endorses their victory over the "lures of inwardness and death" and their creation of "a form of universe based on harmony, reconciliation, and the golden mean" (18). Spaethling acknowledges "that Goethe concealed within himself a powerful potential for nihilism and tragedy. [... ] But all his life the poet battled to overcome his destructive inclinations, and he succeeded" (173)· Mozart too "presents [...] the total scale of human feelings" (172), but Goethe perceived and endorsed in Mozart's major works "a fully integrated art form, an essentially non-violent and non-tragic view of life" (173). Spaethling follows "the traditional path of humanistic scholarship," which, he believes, "requires no special methodological introduction" (17) or even justification . His book is thoroughly researched, scrupulously documented, sensibly organized, and carefully written — its confessional aspects eliciting respect if not always unqualified assent (in this reader, at least). It is full of interesting information and impressive evidence of the author's knowledge and appreciation not only of Goethe but of Mozart and of music in general. Just the right amount of context and illustration is provided. Spaethling discusses, for example, the circumstances of literary and musical publication in the 18th century and the economic facts of Mozart's life (his income was far from paltry — 12,000 Gulden a year at the height 334 Book Reviews of his career, which was ten times as much as the income of a chief surgeon at the Allgemeines KrankenspitalIn Vienna [82]). He also notes the difference in capacity between the singers in Vienna and those in Weimar as weil as the inferior quality of props and equipment with which Goethe had to make do at the Ducal Court Theatre. It was news to this non-musicologist that Mozart not infrequendy described his programmatic purposes and successes, often in letters to his father (e.g., pp. 159-60), and enlightening that Goethe used the Papageno theme in poems and songs of his own. The information that Charles Ives was among those who have set "Über allen Gipfeln ist Ruh" to music sent me scurrying to the music library to hear the piece. No book is without shortcomings, but almost everyone will be enriched by reading this one. The work is divided into two main parts, followed by the text of Goethe's Der Zauberflöte zweiter Teil (with Eric Blom's English translation), an extensive bibliography, and an index. Part I deals with Goethe and music, and surveys Goethe's active music making (he had lessons on the piano, the flute, and the cello as a youth and later founded a singing group called the "Liebeshof ' and sang bass in another that he called his "Hauskapelle" or "meine...