Reference constraints and individual level inheritance

摘要

Equality constraints partition logical variables into coreference classes, each of which denotes an individual in a domain of discourse. The ese classes, however, are unrelated to each other. We propose reference constraints as a generalization of equality constraints, allowing the specification of a partial ordering among coreference classes. This leads to the notion of individual level inheritance, where an individual denoted by a variable may inherit properties from another individual which is denoted by a subsuming variable in the partial order. A variety of systems, especially systems reasoning in ambiguous domains, would benefit from an efficient, formally based implementation of reference constraints and individual level inheritance.