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Please use this identifier to cite or link to this item:
http://hdl.handle.net/2451/14490
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| Title: | NATURAL LANGUAGE QUERYING OF HISTORICAL DATABASES |
| Authors: | Clifford, James |
| Issue Date: | May-1987 |
| Publisher: | Stern School of Business, New York University |
| Series/Report no.: | IS-87-37 |
| Abstract: | In this paper we examine the connection between two areas of semantics,
namely the semantics of historical databases and the semantics of
natural language querying, and link them together via a common view of
the semantics of time. Since the target application domain is an
historical database, we present the essential features of the Historical
Relational Database Model (HRDM), an extension to the relational model
motivated by the desire to incorporate more "real worldâ
semantics into a database at the conceptual level. We then present the
essential features of QE-III, a formally defined English database query
language whose semantic and pragmatic theory, based on a Montague-type
semantics, makes explicit reference to the notion of denotation with
respect to a moment of time. We demonstrate the use of this language to
query an example historical database, and discuss the issues of how to
provide both a semantic and a pragmatic interpretation for questions
within a model-theoretic framework. |
| URI: | http://hdl.handle.net/2451/14490 |
| Appears in Collections: | IOMS: Information Systems Working Papers
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