A Representation for Collections of Temporal Intervals

Abstract

Temporal representation and reasoning are necessary components of systems that consider events that occur in the real world. This work explores ways of considering collections of intervals of time. This line of research is motivated by related work being done by our research group on appointment scheduling and time management. Natural language expressions that refer to collections of intervals are used naturally and routinely in these contexts, and an effective means of representing them is essential. Previous studies, which considered intervals primarily in isolation, have difficulties in representing some classes of expressions. This occurs not only with expressions that explicitly refer to collections of intervals, such as “the first of every month, ” but also with expressions that do so only