On the Declarative Semantics of Inheritance Networks

Abstract

Usually, semantics of inheritance networks is specified indirectly through a translation into one of the standard logical formalisms. Since such translation involves an algorithmic aspect, which is usually complex, these approaches to inheritance are not truly declarative. We provide a general framework for specifying a direct semantics of inheritance networks. Because the networks are not expressive enough to capture all intuitions behind inheritance, a number of significantly different semantics have been proposed. Our approach allows us to give direct semantics to a number of different proposals found in the literature, and clarifies the relationships among them. It also provides a yardstick for measuring adequacy of translation into logical formalisms of various intuitions about inheritance. 1

Cite

Text

Thirunarayan et al. "On the Declarative Semantics of Inheritance Networks." International Joint Conference on Artificial Intelligence, 1989.

Markdown

[Thirunarayan et al. "On the Declarative Semantics of Inheritance Networks." International Joint Conference on Artificial Intelligence, 1989.](https://mlanthology.org/ijcai/1989/thirunarayan1989ijcai-declarative/)

BibTeX

@inproceedings{thirunarayan1989ijcai-declarative,
  title     = {{On the Declarative Semantics of Inheritance Networks}},
  author    = {Thirunarayan, Krishnaprasad and Kifer, Michael and Warren, David Scott},
  booktitle = {International Joint Conference on Artificial Intelligence},
  year      = {1989},
  pages     = {1099-1103},
  url       = {https://mlanthology.org/ijcai/1989/thirunarayan1989ijcai-declarative/}
}