[Attempto] Some questions about ACE

[Norbert E. Fuchs]

On 17 Jan 2014, at 19:41 , Norbert E. Fuchs <fuchs at ifi.uzh.ch> wrote:

> On 17 Jan 2014, at 16:24 , Vijay Saraswat <vijay at saraswat.org> wrote:
> 
>> (Particularly rules with non-trivial temporal clauses.)
> 
> Please note that ACE does not provide explicit temporal conjunctions like "before", "after", "while" etc. However, temporality can be expressed by prepositional phrases as in "John works in the morning.". If you use explicit times or dates then you can express them as strings, e.g. "John works at "8 o'clock".", but have to process these strings yourself.

I forgot to add how you can simulate temporal conjunctions by prepositional phrases. 

Here, for example, the case of a temporal sequence – usually expressed by the temporal conjunctions "before", "after" or "and then". Let's assume that you want to express

John sleeps and then works.
or
After John sleeps he works.
or 
Before John works he sleeps.

All three variants can be expressed in ACE as

John sleeps at a time T1 and works at a time T2 and T1 < T2.

Simultaneity can similarly be expressed by equating the respective times. 

Overlapping periods of time – usually expressed by "while" – need more work since we have to define the periods. Let's assume that John works for a part of the time that he is awake. This could be expressed in ACE by

John is awake from a time T11 until a time T12 and T12 > T11 and he works from a time T21 until a time T22 and T22 > T21 and T11 < T21 and T12 > T22.

Regards.

   --- nef