Natural Semantics Research Articles

Kohn–Sham computation and the bivariate view of density functional theory

Informed by an abstraction of Kohn–Sham (KS) computation called a KS machine, a functional analytic perspective is developed on mathematical aspects of density functional theory. A natural semantics for the machine is bivariate, consisting of a sequence of potentials paired with a ground density. Although the question of when the KS machine can converge to a solution (where the potential component matches a designated target) is not resolved here, a number of related ones are. For instance: can the machine progress toward a solution? Barring presumably exceptional circumstances, yes in an energetic sense, but using a potential-mixing scheme rather than the usual density-mixing variety. Are energetic and function space distance notions of proximity-to-solution commensurate? Yes, to a significant degree. If the potential components of a sequence of ground pairs converges to a target density, do the density components cluster on ground densities thereof? Yes, barring particle number drifting to infinity.

An elementary belief function logic

ABSTRACT Non-additive uncertainty theories, typically possibility theory, belief functions and imprecise probabilities share a common feature with modal logic: the duality properties between possibility and necessity measures, belief and plausibility functions as well as between upper and lower probabilities extend the duality between possibility and necessity modalities to the graded environment. It has been shown that the all-or-nothing version of possibility theory can be exactly captured by a minimal epistemic logic (MEL) that uses a very small fragment of the KD modal logic, without resorting to relational semantics. Independently, a belief function logic has been obtained by extending the modal logic S5 to probabilistic graded modalities using Łukasiewicz logic, albeit using relational semantics. This paper shows that a simpler belief function logic can be devised by adding Łukasiewicz logic on top of MEL. It allows for a more natural semantics in terms of Shafer basic probability assignments.

Semantical investigations on non-classical logics with recovery operators: negation

Abstract We investigate mathematical structures that provide natural semantics for families of (quantified) non-classical logics featuring special unary connectives, known as recovery operators, that allow us to ‘recover’ the properties of classical logic in a controlled manner. These structures are known as topological Boolean algebras, which are Boolean algebras extended with additional operations subject to specific conditions of a topological nature. In this study, we focus on the paradigmatic case of negation. We demonstrate how these algebras are well-suited to provide a semantics for some families of paraconsistent Logics of Formal Inconsistency and paracomplete Logics of Formal Undeterminedness. These logics feature recovery operators used to earmark propositions that behave ‘classically’ when interacting with non-classical negations. Unlike traditional semantical investigations, which are carried out in natural language (extended with mathematical shorthand), our formal meta-language is a system of higher-order logic (HOL) for which automated reasoning tools exist. In our approach, topological Boolean algebras are encoded as algebras of sets via their Stone-type representation. We use our higher-order meta-logic to define and interrelate several transformations on unary set operations, which naturally give rise to a topological cube of opposition. Additionally, our approach enables a uniform characterization of propositional, first-order and higher-order quantification, including restrictions to constant and varying domains. With this work, we aim to make a case for the utilization of automated theorem proving technology for conducting computer-supported research in non-classical logics. All the results presented in this paper have been formally verified, and in many cases obtained, using the Isabelle/HOL proof assistant.

The Identification of Industrial Clusters and their Spatial Characteristics Based on Natural Semantics

The Identification of Industrial Clusters and their Spatial Characteristics Based on Natural Semantics

Towards logical foundations for probabilistic computation

The overall purpose of the present work is to lay the foundations for a new approach to bridge logic and probabilistic computation. To this aim we introduce extensions of classical and intuitionistic propositional logic with counting quantifiers, that is, quantifiers that measure to which extent a formula is true. The resulting systems, called cCPL and iCPL, respectively, admit a natural semantics, based on the Borel σ-algebra of the Cantor space, together with a sound and complete proof system. Our main results consist in relating cCPL and iCPL with some central concepts in the study of probabilistic computation. On the one hand, the validity of cCPL-formulae in prenex form characterizes the corresponding level of Wagner's hierarchy of counting complexity classes, closely related to probabilistic complexity. On the other hand, proofs in iCPL correspond, in the sense of Curry and Howard, to typing derivations for a randomized extension of the λ-calculus, so that counting quantifiers reveal the probability of termination of the underlying probabilistic programs.

Some Aspects about Visualization of Natural Semantics for a Selected Domain-Specific Language

In this article, we present a practical way to visualize natural semantics calculations for a selected domain-specific language for motion control of a robot in an orthogonal grid. Natural semantics is important from the point of view of verifying the properties of the language and for expressing the dynamics of the calculation and the construction of a set of states during the calculation. Domain-specific languages are used more and more in practice, therefore their inclusion in the curriculum of the subject Semantics of Programming Languages is a significant innovation of the traditional way of teaching the semantics of (mostly) imperative languages. In the article, we present the basics of the natural semantics of the robot language and its software visualization. For this, we have developed an application, the use of which is of great importance in the teaching itself and allows students to easily understand the basics of formal semantics thanks to interactivity.

Industry Linkage and Spatial Co-Evolution Characteristics of Industrial Clusters Based on Natural Semantics—Taking the Electronic Information Industry Cluster in the Pearl River Delta as an Example

Identifying industrial clusters and the changes in the spatial representation of these clusters is a basic but challenging issue for understanding and promoting urban and regional development. However, the current evolution characteristics of industrial clusters pay too much attention to the spatial perspective, and some studies analyze the evolution of industrial clusters from the perspective of industrial linkages. It is very important to combine industrial linkages and spatial agglomeration to observe the evolution of industrial clusters. To solve this problem, based on the enterprise big data from 1984 to 2019, this study uses the method based on natural semantics and spatial collaborative aggregation to identify industrial linkages and spatial aggregation of industrial clusters, and takes the electronic information industry cluster in the Pearl River Delta (PRD) region as an example for empirical research. It can be seen from the results that most of the industries in the PRD cluster remain stable, and the industrial linkages and spatial agglomeration within the cluster are increasing. From the overall type of change, fewer industries can maintain high linkage–high proximity, and most industries are mainly concentrated in low linkage–high proximity. Through the combination of semantic and spatial synergy analysis, this study helps urban planners and policymakers understand the changes in industrial linkages and spatial agglomeration of industrial clusters.

A Tool for Describing and Checking Natural Semantics Definitions of Programming Languages

Many universities have courses and projects revolving around compiler or interpreter implementation as part of their degree programmes in computer science. In such teaching activities, tool support can be highly beneficial. While there are already several tools for assisting with development of the front end of compilers, tool support tapers off towards the back end, or requires more background experience than is expected of undergraduate students. Structural operational semantics is a useful and mathematically simple formalism for specifying the behaviour of programs and a specification lends itself well to implementation; in particular big-step or natural semantics is often a useful and simple approach. However, many students struggle with learning the notation and often come up with ill-defined and meaningless attempts at defining a structural operational semantics. A survey shows that students working on programming language projects feel that tool support is lacking and would be useful. Many of these problems encountered when developing a semantic definition are similar to problems encountered in programming, in particular ones that are essentially the result of type errors. We present a pedagogical metalanguage based on natural semantics, and its implementation, as an attempt to marry two notions: a syntax similar to textbook notation for natural semantics on the one hand, and automatic verification of some correctness properties on the other by means of a strong type discipline. The metalanguage and the tool provide the facilities for writing and executing specifications as a form of programming. The user can check that the specification is not meaningless as well as execute programs, if the specification makes sense.

Integrated fuzzy linguistic preference relations approach and fuzzy Quality Function Deployment to the sustainable design of hybrid electric vehicles

Through the prevalence of sustainable ideas, automobiles are increasingly pursuing environmental protection strategies for green design, the non-traditional hybrid electric vehicles (HEV) are promoted continuously. If the company can add emotional value to the modeling of HEV, it will be helpful to its sustainable design and sales promotion of it. Therefore, an innovative model combining fuzzy linguistic preference relations (FLPR) and fuzzy quality function deployment (QFD) is proposed here to explore the connection between customer sentiment and the front view of the HEV. Compared with the previous methods, FLPR has the advantages of fewer comparison times and high consistency. First, find out the customer’s emotional expectations and attribute weight ranking for HEV through FLPR, and import customer requirements (CRs) on the left side of fuzzy QFD. Second, the grey prediction model was used to screen out the key engineering features (ECs) and the initial weight of HEV. Finally, based on human subjective imprecise natural semantics, fuzzy QFD established a matrix association between CRs and key ECs, then finally obtained the optimal combination of ECs' final weight and morphological design. The results can assist designers to shorten product development cycles and improve customers' emotional satisfaction, which provides a theoretical reference for the sustainable design and marketing of environmentally friendly cars in the future.

Semantic Structure of Javanese Verb ‘to cut’: Natural Semantics Metalanguage Analysis

The verb ‘to cut’ in Javanese is an interesting verb to study. This is because the tools, the objects, the way it is use, and the results will affect the selection of the lexicon used. This qualitative descriptive study focuses on describing the semantic structure of the verb ‘to cut’ in Javanese using the Natural Semantic Metalanguage (NSM) approach which was initiated by Wierzbicka (1996) using one of the theoretical concepts of NSM. The source of the data was obtained from the intuition of the researcher as a native speaker of the Javanese language assisted by using the Bausastra Jawa dictionary and Kamus Bahasa Jawa - Bahasa Indonesia I . The data analysis technique used four steps including determining the original meaning, deriving meaning, determining polysemy, and paraphrasing meaning. The results of the research show that there are 12 lexicons ‘to cut’ in Javanese which have close meanings, i.e., nyukur, nyunati, mbeleh, nguliti, nugel, nggraji, negor, mbabat, ngrajang, nyacah, nyuwek and nggunting , which are then grouped into 6 categories based on the object.

Virtual reality therapy in special needs education.

The Virtual Reality (VR) technology has become a part of our everyday lives. The VR systems allow the users to be directly involved in human-computer interaction. The Virtual Environment provides artificial sensory information, while Virtual Tools allow direct interaction from the users side. Virtual devices such as computers, smartphones, and interactive whiteboards often appear both in general and special education. Education and rehabilitation professionals also use VR systems in various fields. The aim of the study is to summarise the wide range of VR system applications in diversified areas of special education. Our literature review focuses on special education and rehabilitation, moving towards the context of inclusion. Based on the numerous research, applying VR tools to the educational field has been increasing year by year. In the early ’90s, researchers began using virtual learning environments and they demonstrated that the application of virtual methods can be extended to behavioral therapies (relate anxiety), physical therapies (e.g. wheelchair simulators), and to develop cognitive performance (to develop attention) or social skills (learning to navigate community literacy). VR systems allow the possibility of providing continuous feedback and the opportunity for interactive learning and skill development. In the practice of special needs education, VR systems are useful in intervention, as well as monitoring, and evaluation. By using VR systems, users from any age group can be motivated. Furthermore, these systems apply their own natural semantics and can be used without spoken language or other conventional symbols. VR can promote education more accessible and differentiated for children with disabilities. This is one of the conditions for the effectiveness of co-education. The VR systems make no distinction between the users, on the other hand, users with special needs may require more adaptation or support in using VR. Hungarian professionals in the field of special needs education are also using VR tools, which offer opportunities to develop skills for independent living.

CRISIS as a Keyword in Anglophone Public Discourse: a Semantic, Ideological and Cultural Analysis

In Anglophone public discourse, the word crisis plays a significant role in discussion of critical events and situations across a wide range of domains. This paper discusses the word’s status as a keyword in mainstream Anglophone discourse, unpacks its semantic contents through natural semantics metalanguage and corpus-assisted collocational analysis, and explores the ideological and cultural assumptions underpinning its usage. It finds that the idea of “government” is central to the meaning of crisis and that the contemporary use of the word not only signals a systematic problem, but also legitimates government actions and the general public’s expectations, reflecting a particular way of thinking about the state and its involvement in liberal society and a shift away from the classical interpretation of the role of government. The study also raises questions about interpreting critical world events and analysing political discourse through the lens of crisis and its related concepts.

A. N. PRIOR’S SYSTEM Q: A REVIEW

In his “Time and Modality”, based on his own philosophical motivations, Arthur Norman Prior proposed the modal logic Q as a correct modal logic in 1957. Prior developed Q in order to offer a logic for contingent beings, in which one could rationally state that some beings are contingent and some are necessary. One may say that Q is an actualist modal logic with a natural semantics. This review article is a developed description/discussion of/on “The System Q” that is the fifth chapter of “Time and Modality”. I have attempted to analyse the logical structure of system Q in order to provide a more understandable description as well as logical analysis for today’s logicians, philosophers, and information-computer scientists. In the paper, the Polish notations are translated into modern notations in order to be more comprehensible and to support the developed formal descriptions and semantic analysis.

A Transient Semantics for Typed Racket

Mixed-typed languages enable programmers to link typed and untyped components in various ways. Some offer rich type systems to facilitate the smooth migration of untyped code to the typed world; others merely provide a convenient form of type Dynamic together with a conventional structural type system. Orthogonal to this dimension, Natural systems ensure the integrity of types with a sophisticated contract system, while Transient systems insert simple first-order checks at strategic places within typed code. Furthermore, each method of ensuring type integrity comes with its own blame-assignment strategy. Typed Racket has a rich migratory type system and enforces the types with a Natural semantics. Reticulated Python has a simple structural type system extended with Dynamic and enforces types with a Transient semantics. While Typed Racket satisfies the most stringent gradual-type soundness properties at a significant performance cost, Reticulated Python seems to limit the performance penalty to a tolerable degree and is nevertheless type sound. This comparison raises the question of whether Transient checking is applicable to and beneficial for a rich migratory type system. This paper reports on the surprising difficulties of adapting the Transient semantics of Reticulated Python to the rich migratory type system of Typed Racket. The resulting implementation, Shallow Typed Racket, is faster than the standard Deep Typed Racket but only when the Transient blame assignment strategy is disabled. For language designers, this report provides valuable hints on how to equip an existing compiler to support a Transient semantics. For theoreticians, the negative experience with Transient blame calls for a thorough investigation of this strategy.

Exploring the Key Factors for Preventing Public Health Crises Under Incomplete Information

The spread of COVID-19 has triggered one of the largest pandemics in modern human history. Humanity is still in the incomplete information period for this infectious disease, and how to effectively deal with such a major public crisis is a crucial problem. Although there are divergences in human natural semantics, the incomplete information increases it. Therefore, this study integrates the neutrosophic set and the Decision-Making Trial and Evaluation Laboratory (DEMATEL) methods to explore the key factors which would prevent expansion of the epidemic in the face of incomplete knowledge. The neutrosophic set technique is an effective tool for the representation of the ambiguity of natural human semantic expression, for the analysis of incomplete, uncertain, and inconsistent information. DEMATEL is used to explore the causes and effects between factors and to generate an influential network relationship map. The results of analysis can help the government and relevant organizations to understand the cause and effect relationship between the factors and set appropriate prevention strategies. The results of this study show that the incorporation of neutrosophic set theory leads to a more meaningful evaluation under incomplete information. “Detect” is a key factor affecting the entire system. The results of this study contribute to the advancement and development of scientifically based decision-making by helping governments and relevant organizations to understand the causal relationships between factors, to set appropriate prevention strategies.

Urban scene understanding based on semantic and socioeconomic features: From high-resolution remote sensing imagery to multi-source geographic datasets

Scene classification is a means to interpret high-resolution remote sensing (HRS) imagery, to obtain the high-level semantic information, which can provide a reliable reference for urban planning and monitoring. The traditional scene classification methods based on HRS imagery take uniform grid cells as the scene units, thereby missing the geographic boundaries and leading to the mosaicking effect. Therefore, in this paper, the urban scene is defined as a geographic unit bordered by the road network. The task of urban scene understanding is to recognize the socioeconomic or natural semantics of the urban scene. However, due to the complexity of the urban environment, the effectiveness of the traditional scene classification methods is limited on account of three problems when applied in urban scenes: 1) The lack of socioeconomic information in HRS images, with which it is difficult to discriminate diverse urban scenes with similar exteriors. 2) The large discrepancy in the sizes and shapes of urban land parcels affects the scene feature extraction and representation. 3) Urban scene understanding frameworks that can embed various scene classification models have rarely been studied. In this paper, to solve these problems, a universal urban scene understanding framework based on multi-source geographic data (USUMG) is proposed. In the USUMG framework, road network and water channel data from OpenStreetMap (OSM) are used for generating the urban scene units. For each irregular unit, a scene decomposition method based on a morphological skeleton is employed to represent the urban scene unit by unified processing patches. To integrate the different data sources, the high-level semantic features extracted from the HRS imagery and the socioeconomic features extracted from point of interest (POI) data are fused to determine the urban scene category. Finally, the USUMG framework with various scene classification methods was tested in urban districts of Wuhan and Macao in China to verify the universality and feasibility of the proposed framework. The experimental performances are provided in this paper as a benchmark for urban scene understanding based on multi-source geographic data.

Uniform labelled calculi for preferential conditional logics based on neighbourhood semantics

Abstract The preferential conditional logic $ \mathbb{PCL} $, introduced by Burgess, and its extensions are studied. First, a natural semantics based on neighbourhood models, which generalizes Lewis’ sphere models for counterfactual logics, is proposed. Soundness and completeness of $ \mathbb{PCL} $ and its extensions with respect to this class of models are proved directly. Labelled sequent calculi for all logics of the family are then introduced. The calculi are modular and have standard proof-theoretical properties, the most important of which is admissibility of cut that entails a syntactic proof of completeness of the calculi. By adopting a general strategy, root-first proof search terminates, thereby providing a decision procedure for $ \mathbb{PCL} $ and its extensions. Finally, semantic completeness of the calculi is established: from a finite branch in a failed proof attempt it is possible to extract a finite countermodel of the root sequent. The latter result gives a constructive proof of the finite model property of all the logics considered.

On some innovations in teaching the formal semantics using software tools

Abstract In this work we discuss the motivation for innovations and need of a teaching tool for the visualization of the natural semantics method of imperative programming languages. We present the rôle of the teaching software, its design, development and use in the teaching process. Our software module is able to visualize the natural semantics evaluation of programs. It serves as a compiler with environment that can visually interpret simple programming language Jane statements and to depict them into a derivation tree that represents the semantic method of natural semantics. A formal definition of programming language Jane used in the teaching of formal semantics and production rules in natural semantics for that language are shown as well. We present, how the presented teaching tool can provide particular visual steps in the process of finding the meaning of well-structured input program and to depict complete natural-semantic representation of an input program.

Verba Bahasa Bali dalam Ranah Perkebunan Kopi: Analisis Metabahasa Semantik Alami

This research is a qualitative descriptive study that aimed to determine the semantic structure of Balinese verbs in the realm of coffee plantations with the natural semantics metalanguage theory. The research location was Pucaksari Village, Busungbiu District, Buleleng Regency. The method used to explore data is qualitative. The method used in collecting the data were interview, listening, conversation, and elicitation. The results of the study show that there are eight verbs used in the realm of coffee plantations, include mamula (plant), numbeg (hoe), ngetep (cut), nyambung (connect), ngalap (picking), nyeruh (pound), nyemuh (dry in the sun), and nambunang (collecting). Verb mamula, numbeg, ngetep, nyambung, nyeruh, nyemuh and nambunang having an original meaning ‘do’ that has a polysemy with the original meaning ‘happen’ and it has the exponent X do something to Y, something happened to Y. Verb ngalap andnambunang have the original meaning do has a polysemy with ‘moving’. They have exponent X do something about Y, Y move.

Coinductive Natural Semantics for Compiler Verification in Coq

(Coinductive) natural semantics is presented as a unifying framework for the verification of total correctness of compilers in Coq (with the feature that a verified compiler can be obtained). In this way, we have a simple, easy, and intuitive framework; to carry out the verification of a compiler, using a proof assistant in which both cases are considered: terminating and non-terminating computations (total correctness).