Information States as First Class Citizens

The information state of an agent is changed when a text (in natural language) is processed. The meaning of a text can be taken to be this information state change potential. The inference of a consequence make explicit something already implicit in the premises -- i.e. that no information state change occurs if the (assumed) consequence text is processed after the (given) premise texts have been processed. Elementary logic (i.e. first-order logic) can be used as a logical representation language for texts, but the notion of a information state (a set of possibilities -- namely first-order models) is not available from the object language (belongs to the meta language). This means that texts with other texts as parts (e.g. propositional attitudes with embedded sentences) cannot be treated directly. Traditional intensional logics (i.e. modal logic) allow (via modal operators) access to the information states from the object language, but the access is limited and interference with (ext...

• Type: Conference
• Year: 1992
• Where: ACL
• Authors: Jørgen Villadsen
• Keywords: ACL 1992, ACL 2007, Information State Change, Information States, Object Language