IRI-9521487 Iwanska, Lucja Wayne State University $18,000-12 mos RPG: The Semantics and Pragmatics of Natural Language in A Computational Model for Representation and Inference This research planning grant is to develop a knowledge representation system closely resembling computational, algorithmic, representational and inferential characteristics of natural language, starting with a Boolean algebra approach. It is planned to demonstrate that only combining semantic and pragmatic processing, logical, context-independent, and nonlogical, context-dependent reasoning in natural language allows one to fully simulate human understanding of natural language and write programs that correctly derive, represent, and reason with the information from natural language texts. Further, it is planned to demonstrate the attractiveness of the proposed framework by applying it to computing some pragmatic aspects of natural language, all extremely common and all having to do with the way knowledge is communicated and acquired by natural language. The objective of the project is to produce a research proposal for continued research in this area.
