A unified approach to four important classes of unary operators

Abstract

In this paper, we study operator dependent modifiers and we interpret the dual pair of modal operators based on an algebraic definition. It is a known fact that the substantiating and weakening modifier operators can be induced by repeating the arguments of conjunctive and disjunctive operators. We provide the conditions for which these modifier operators satisfy the requirements for a dual pair of necessity and possibility operators. Next, the necessary and sufficient condition for the distributivity of unary operators over conjunctive and disjunctive operators is presented. This also means that setting the distributivity as a requirement results in a unary operator that is identical to the modal operators mentioned above. Using this property, we establish an important connection between modal operators and linguistic hedges. Previously, we demonstrated that the unary operators induced by compositions of two strong negations satisfy the requirements for a dual pair of modal operators. Here, we view the negation operator as a modifier operator. Then, it is shown that (1) the strong negations, (2) the substantiating and weakening modifier operators, modal operators and linguistic hedges mentioned above, and (3) the unary operators, which are distributive over conjunctive and disjunctive operators, may be viewed as special cases of a unified unary operator class.