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This thesis is mainly concerned with the definability issue when modal
logic is interpreted on topological spaces. A topological analogon of
Goldblatt-Thomason theorem is proved. Some new topological
constructions are introduced. One of them, namely the notion of
compact extension, is a generaliz...
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This thesis began as something of an accident. While working on a
dramatically different topic, I was exposed to some rather odd
examples of nominalization from the 19 th century that were rather
confounding in their ungrammaticality. Idle curiosity got the better
of me, and I became obsessed wit...
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Is Multiplication Harder than Addition?
Arithmetical Definability over Finite Structures
Troy Lee
Abstract:
In this thesis, we show that two definability results of Julia Robinson,
namely that multiplication and the successor relation can first-order
define addition, and that the divisibility r...
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Optimality Theory came into being during the last decade of the 20th
century as a linguistic theory seeking to explain language phenomena
in a rather revolutionary way: grammars would no more consist of
inviolable strict rules to be learnt by heart, but rather are to be
thought of as sets of viol...
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k-SAT is the very well studied restriction of the SAT problem which
has attracted much attention due to its NP-complete complexity and
close relation to many practical problems in Artificial
Intelligence. Inherited from its parent, k-SAT is also NP-complete and
many practical problems can be redu...
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Stand Over There, Please
The Dynamics of Vagueness, the Origins of Vagueness, and How Pie-Cutting
Relates to Ancient Heaps of Sand
Seth Cable
Abstract:
This thesis is an investigation into the semantics of vague
expressions, although vague predicates are predominantly discussed. It
proposes an ...
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In this thesis, I will survey some philosophically representative
approaches to the problem of the relationship between context and
meaning. Starting from G.W.F. Hegel's discussion of the
meaninglessness of indexical terms in the Phenomenology of Spirit, I
will investigate Gottlob Frege's notion ...
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In natural language there exists a type of sentence called
conditionals. They are characterized in English by the use of
connectors. These connectors can be different but fulfil, in most
cases, at least two conditions: they link two sentences and they
contain the word 'if'. The semantic develop...
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Description Logics (DL) is a family of knowledge representation (KR)
formalisms tailored to represent the knowledge of an application
domain by first defining the basic and derived concepts of the domain,
and then using these concepts to specify properties of objects and
individuals in the domain...
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Questionnaires appear in many places around us. Their structure can be
quite complex. It is therefore beneficial to reason about them
automatically. In this thesis I will define questionnaires; identify
their structural properties; and demonstrate how formal methods,
namely model checking, can as...