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A modal semantics for the negation as failure and the closed world assumption rules

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Book cover STACS 91 (STACS 1991)

Part of the book series: Lecture Notes in Computer Science ((LNCS,volume 480))

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Abstract

In this paper we show how to syntactically represent the relation of cause and effect between a predicate name and the bodies of the clauses which define this predicate in a logic program. In so doing, we prove that we can logically express many properties about SLD-trees, especially the absence or the presence of an empty leaf and/or an infinite branch. This relation of cause and effect is linked to the execution of the program. Thus it is a temporal relation. Modal logics have shown in the past their ability to deal with temporal concepts and temporal properties of sequential or parallel programs. Consequently we naturally define in modal logic a completion formula of logic programs. This formula is a modal version of Clark's formula. It gives soundness and completeness results of two nononotonic inference rules : the negation as failure and the closed world assumption.

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Christian Choffrut Matthias Jantzen

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© 1991 Springer-Verlag Berlin Heidelberg

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Balbiani, P. (1991). A modal semantics for the negation as failure and the closed world assumption rules. In: Choffrut, C., Jantzen, M. (eds) STACS 91. STACS 1991. Lecture Notes in Computer Science, vol 480. Springer, Berlin, Heidelberg. https://doi.org/10.1007/BFb0020826

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/BFb0020826

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  • Publisher Name: Springer, Berlin, Heidelberg

  • Print ISBN: 978-3-540-53709-0

  • Online ISBN: 978-3-540-47002-1

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