Abstract
Inheritance is a characteristic reasoning mechanism in systems with taxonomic information. In rule-based deductive systems with inclusion polymorphism, inheritance can be captured in a natural way by means of typed substitution. However, with method overriding and multiple inheritance, it is well-known that inheritance is nonmonotonic and the semantics of inheritance becomes problematical. We present a general framework, based on Dung’s abstract theory of argumentation, for developing a natural semantics for declarative programs with dynamic defeasible inheritance. We investigate the relationship between the presented semantics and Dobbie and Topor’s perfect model (with overriding) semantics, and show that for inheritance-stratified programs, the two semantics coincide. The proposed semantics, nevertheless, still provides the correct skeptical meanings for non-inheritance-stratified programs, while the perfect model semantics fails to yield sensible meanings for them.
This is a preview of subscription content, log in via an institution to check access.
Access this chapter
Tax calculation will be finalised at checkout
Purchases are for personal use only
Preview
Unable to display preview. Download preview PDF.
References
Abiteboul, S., Lausen, G., Upho, H., Waller, E.: Methods and Rules. In: Proceedings of the 1993 ACM SIGMOD International Conference on the Management of Data. ACM Press (1993) 32–41
Aït-Kaci, H., Nasr, R.: LOGIN: A Logic Programming Language with Built-in Inheritance. The Journal of Logic Programming 3 (1986) 185–215
Aït-Kaci, H., Podelski, A.: Towards a Meaning of Life. The Journal of Logic Programming16 (1993) 195–234
Akama, K.: Declarative Semantics of Logic Programs on Parameterized Representation Systems. Advances in Software Science and Technology 5 (1993) 45–63
Dobbie, G., Topor, R.: On the Declarative and Procedural Semantics of Deductive Object-Oriented Systems. Journal of Intelligent Information Systems 4 (1995) 193–219
Dung, P.M.: On the Acceptability of Arguments and Its Fundamental Role in Nonmonotonic Reasoning, Logic Programming and N-Person Games. Artificial Intelligence77 (1995) 321–357
Horty, J.F., Thomason, R.H., Touretzky, D.S.: A Skeptical Theory of Inheritance in Nonmonotonic Semantic Networks. Artificial Intelligence 42 (1990) 311–348
Kifer, M., Lausen, G., Wu, J.: Logical Foundations of Object-Oriented and Frame-Based Languages. Journal of the Association for Computing Machinery 42 (1995)741–843
Nantajeewarawat, E.: An Axiomatic Framework for Deductive Object-Oriented Representation Systems Based-on Declarative Program Theory. PhD thesis, CS-97-7, Asian Institute of Technology, Bangkok, Thailand (1997)
Nantajeewarawat, E., Wuwongse, V.: Defeasible Inheritance Through Specialization. Technical Report, Computer Science and Information Management Program, Asian Institute of Technology, Bangkok, Thailand (1999)
Przymusinski, T.C.: On the Declarative Semantics of Deductive Databases and Logic Programs. In: Minker, J. (ed.): Foundations of Deductive Databases and Logic Programming. Morgan Kaufmann (1988) 193–216
Stein, L. A.: Resolving Ambiguity in Nonmonotonic Inheritance Hierarchies. Artificial Intelligence 55 (1992) 259–310
Touretzky, D.S.: The Mathematics of Inheritance. Morgan Kaufmann (1986)
Author information
Authors and Affiliations
Editor information
Editors and Affiliations
Rights and permissions
Copyright information
© 1999 Springer-Verlag Berlin Heidelberg
About this paper
Cite this paper
Nantajeewarawat, E., Wuwongse, V. (1999). An Argumentation Approach to Semantics of Declarative Programs with Defeasible Inheritance. In: Thiagarajan, P.S., Yap, R. (eds) Advances in Computing Science — ASIAN’99. ASIAN 1999. Lecture Notes in Computer Science, vol 1742. Springer, Berlin, Heidelberg. https://doi.org/10.1007/3-540-46674-6_21
Download citation
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/3-540-46674-6_21
Published:
Publisher Name: Springer, Berlin, Heidelberg
Print ISBN: 978-3-540-66856-5
Online ISBN: 978-3-540-46674-1
eBook Packages: Springer Book Archive