11th Seminar on Algebra, Logic and Geometry in Informatics (ALGI): Abstracts of Talks

[ Schedule and Participants (English) | Info (Japanese) | ALGI Home (Japanese, English) ]

Tsutomu Fujinami

A Decidable Linear Logic for Speech Translation

The structure of objects employed in the study of Natural Language Semantics has been increasingly being complicated to represent the items of information conveyed by utterances. The complexity becomes a source of troubles when we employ those theories in building linguistic applications such as speech translation system. To understand better how programs operating on semantic representations work, we adopt a logical approach and present a monadic and multiplicative linear logic. In designing the fragment, we refine on the multiplicative conjunction to employ both the commutative and non-commutative connectives. The commutative connective is used to glue up a set of formulae representing a semantic object conjointly. The non-commutative connective is used to glue up a list of formulae representing the argument structure of an object, where the order matters. We also introduce to our fragment a Lambek slash, the directional implication, to concatenate the formula representing the predicative part of the object and the list of formulae representing the argument part. The monadic formulae encode each element of the argument part by representing its sort with the predicate and the element as the place-holder. The fragment enjoys the nice property of being decidable. To encode contextual information involved in utterances, however, we extend the fragment with the exponential operator. The context is regarded as a resource available as many as required, but not infinitely many. We encode the items of context with the exponential operator, but ensure that the operator should appear only in the antecedent. The extention keeps the fragment decidable because the proof search will not fall into an endless search caused by the coupling of unlimited supply and consumption. We show that the fragment is rich enough to encode and transform semantic objects employed in the contemporary linguistic theories. The result guarantees that the theories on natural language semantics can be implemented reasonably and safely on computers.

Yoshiki Kinoshita

Kleene Categories for Tree Languages

We define Kleene categories and a use of this notion to give an account for regular tree languages. The case where the signature of the trees are all unary specialises to the usual regular string languages.

Misao Nagayama

On Girard's New Denotational Semantics

The purpose of this talk is to discuss topics introduced by J.Y-.Girard in the monograph titled ``Locus Solum'' (available from Girard's page, manuscript, 2001).

The main notions dealt with will be ``locus'' and ``ludics''. The ``locus'' stands for a new logic, obtained as an extention of linear logic, called ``Locative Logic'' such that the duality still holds and a new notion of location is added into the syntax. The ``ludics'' is game semantics for Locative Logic which help us understand the normalization interactively. Our discussion includes an introduction to the theory and discussions on related topics in other areas.


Hitoshi Ohsaki

Beyond Regularity: Equational Tree Automata for Associative and Commutative Theories

A new tree automata framework, named equational tree automata, is presented. In the newly introduced setting, congruence closures of recognized tree languages are recognizable. Furthermore, we prove the union and intersection operations are closed in certain useful cases. To compare with an early related work of Gilleron and Tison, we discuss the relationship between a special Turing machine, called linear bounded automata, and equational tree automata. As a result, we reason about some decidability results. We further present the hierarchy of 4 classes of tree languages.

John Power

Computational Effects and Enriched Lawvere Theories

In the late 1980's, Eugenio Moggi proposed using monads to give a unified way to model computational effects such as state, exceptions, nondeterminism and input/output. Here, we propose a different but, in a precise sense, almost equivalent approach, using the concept of Lawvere theory, suitably enriched. This keeps the mathematics closer to the computational phenomena, supports a theory of modularity that has hitherto been missing, and fits naturally with well structured general development of structural operational semantics for at least some such effects. Parts of the technical content of this work have been done jointly with Martin Hyland, Gordon Plotkin, and others.

Osamu Takaki

Primitive Recursive Analogues of Large Cardinals

For more than twenty years, several proof theorists have investigated proof theoretic ordinals of set theoretic systems based on KP (Kripke-Platek set theory). In order to obtain such ordinals, they deal with several large cardinals and admissible ordinals. For example, they first consider a certain large cardinal X and an admissible ordinal A corresponding to X and a system KP* which is based on KP and characterized by A, and next they define certain sets of ordinals and functions by employing X (which are called ``Skolem hulls and collapsing functions'') and, by using such sets and functions, establish a primitive recursive structure which bears the proof theoretic ordinal of KP*.

Observing their inventions such as Skolem hulls, collapsing functions, and primitive recursive structures above, we can expect a possibility of existence of primitive recursive ordinals corresponding to large cardinals (and admissible ordinals) which are employed for establishing the proof theoretic ordinals.

In this talk, we take two systems: KPi corresponding to the least weakly inaccessible cardinal and KPM corresponding to the least weakly Mahlo cardinal, and propose two primitive recursive ordinals to have properties similar to those of the cardinals above. These ordinals are obtained from primitive recursive structures established by Skolem hulls and collapsing functions, which are defined by M.Rathjen for establishing the proof theoretic ordinals of KPi and KPM.


Izumi Takeuti

On a Problem by Y. Akama and D. Takeuti


Ralf Treinen

Tree Automata and Tree Constraints

We are interested in the question whether automata techniques can help to solve constraints over trees.

Tree constraints are first-order formulas built over a given set of predicate symbols with a fixed interpretation in a domain of trees. The semantics of such a tree constraint is a relation over trees. Tree automata, on the other hand, provide a mechanism to define sets of trees. Tree automata are well-investigated; they are known to enjoy basically the same nice properties than word automata.

Unfortunately, classical automata are not well equipped to recognize the kind of relation that we can get as the semantics of a constraint. What is missing is

In the case of word automata both extensions pose no problem since they are subsumed by the closure properties of word automata. The same holds for the extension of tree automata to tuples, and it also holds at least in some interesting special cases for the extension of tree automata by tests. Unfortunately, we encounter severe problems if we want to combine both extensions to tree automata.

We will discuss the (mostly negative) results that we have obtained for our new class of tree automata, and we will illustrate the automata approach at hand of the (still open) problem of entailment of non-structural subtype constraints.


Hideki Tsuiki

Domain Theoretic Account of Computability via Bottomed Sequences

Computability over a topological space is given via its embedding to the set of infinite sequences in which $n$ bottomes are allowed to exist. In this talk, we give the domain-theoretic account of computation over $n$-bottom sequence space and its relation with computation over topological spaces like $R$. As a result, we show that a compact metric space $X$ is $n$-dimensional (n = 0,1,ldots, infinite) if $X$ is homeomorphic to the set of minimum elements of the limit space of an algebraic domain, whose limit space is $n$-dimensional.