The Logic of Typed Feature Structures
With Applications to Unification Grammars, Logic Programs and Constraint Resolution

This book develops the theory of typed feature structures and provides a logical foundation for logic programming and constraint-based reasoning systems.

Robert L. Carpenter (Author)

9780521022545, Cambridge University Press

Paperback / softback, published 10 November 2005

280 pages, 28 b/w illus.
24.5 x 17 x 1.5 cm, 0.453 kg

"...an indispensable compendium for the researcher or graduate student working on constraint-based grammatical formalisms, and they also make it a very useful reference work for researchers in object-oriented databases and logic programming." Fernando Pereira, Computational Linguistics

This book develops the theory of typed feature structures, a data structure that generalizes both first-order terms and feature structures of unification-based grammars to include inheritance, typing, inequality, cycles and intensionality. The resulting synthesis serves as a logical foundation for grammars, logic programming and constraint-based reasoning systems. A logical perspective is adopted which employs an attribute-value description language along with complete equational axiomatizations of the various systems of feature structures. At the same time, efficiency concerns are kept in mind and complexity and representability results are provided. The application of feature structures to phrase structure grammars is described and completeness results are shown for standard evaluation strategies. Definite clause logic programs are treated as a special case of phrase structure grammars. Constraint systems are introduced and an enumeration technique is developed for solving arbitrary attribute-value logic constraints. This book, with its innovative approach to data structure, will be essential reading for researchers in computational linguistics, logic programming and knowledge representation. Its self-contained presentation makes it flexible enough to serve as both a research tool and a text book.

Acknowledgements
Part I. Basics: 1. Introduction
2. Types and inheritance
3. Feature structures
4. Attribute-value descriptions and satisfaction
Part II. Extensions: 5. Acyclic feature structures
6. Appropriateness and typing
7. Inequations
8. Identity and extensionality
9. Maximality, groundedness and closed world inference
Part III. Alternatives: 10. Variables and assignments
11. Feature algebras
12. Infinite feature structures and domains
Part IV. Applications: 13. Unification-based phrase structure grammars
14. Definite clause programming
15. Recursive type constraint systems
Bibliography.

Subject Areas: Mathematical theory of computation [UYA]