RE: SUO: RE: A disclaimer about 'new KIF'
>Thank you, Pat.
>
>Lw1w itself isn't compact, of course. I'll be interested in what you mean by
>'equivalent to a [hopefully compact-- Moi] sublanguage of Lw1w'.
What I meant was to express a hope that the sublanguage would be
compact, since it is a very simple sublanguage whose expressions have
a finite representation (though not in the syntax of Lww) . I now
think I was wrong, however.
It is probably best if I refrain from making any more public
announcements until we have worked out the details.
>I'm also particularly interested in metalinguistic extensions.
So am I. One thing at a time, though :-)
Pat
>Jay
>
>-----Original Message-----
>From: pat hayes [mailto:phayes@ai.uwf.edu]
>Sent: Monday, March 12, 2001 1:47 PM
>To: Jay Halcomb
>Cc: standard-upper-ontology@ieee.org
>Subject: Re: SUO: RE: A disclaimer about 'new KIF'
>
>
>
> >John and Pat:
> >
> >This is just the sort of discussion which I should like to see more of, and
> >which I consider essential to achieving clarity in a SUO.
> >
> >However, although I cannot tell with certainly, I think that you may be
> >discussing at cross purposes, since John refers to some utilization of a
> >hierarchy of meta-languages, while Pat speaks only of the expressiveness of
> >'sorted FOL'.
> >
> >Clarification?
>
>I will try. Background: part of the motivation for a 'new KIF' was a
>perception that KIF, by trying to be aqll things to all mean, was
>rather a complex and awkward beast, and that a stripped-down version
>might be of greater utility. So the 'newKIF' is being designed to
>have a 'core' which is as simple as possible, and several
>'extensions' on top of the core which are kind of optional. The core
>is now pretty well understood, and it will be similar to KIF 3.0 but
>with a simpler syntax and a more powerful semantics, and will allow
>superficially "higher-order" operations like quantifying over
>relations and functions. However, it will not actually be
>higher-order. (It is equivalent to a sublanguage of Lw1w which I
>think is compact, but havnt quite proved this yet.) The extensions
>are somewhat murkier than the core, but two of them that have been
>fairly well identified are (1) a sorted extension, in which for
>example argument 'sorts' for functions and relations can be specified
>and will be checkable at parse time; and (2) a meta-extension, which
>will have fully-fledged capabilities for describing its own syntax
>(and the syntax of other languages).
>
>Ive been working on the sorted extension but as far as I know nobody
>has been seriously working on the meta-extension.
>
>The sorted extension provides no actual logical expressivity beyond
>the core; it only 'builds in' some of that expressivity into the
>syntax, which many people find convenient. The meta-extension will
>need a fully fledged mechanism for quasi-quotation and a
>truth-predicate, at the very least, and probably some extra inference
>rules for upward and downward reflection, so it will have a
>considerably extended semantic theory which has not yet been fully
>worked out. It ought to be capable of describing meta-languages to
>any depth,in principle, though I imagine that it would rapidly become
>unworkable in practice beyond two metalevels.
>
>However, none of these will be genuinely higher-order. All extensions
>of the language will be compact and have finite axiomatisations, and
>will be efficiently implementable.
>
>Hope this helps.
>
>Pat Hayes
>
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---------------------------------------------------------------------
IHMC (850)434 8903 home
40 South Alcaniz St. (850)202 4416 office
Pensacola, FL 32501 (850)202 4440 fax
phayes@ai.uwf.edu
http://www.coginst.uwf.edu/~phayes