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Text as tautology: an exploration in inference, transitivity, and logical compression

  • Andrew Potter

    Andrew Potter received his PhD in Information Science from Nova Southeastern University and is currently an Assistant Professor at the University of North Alabama. His research interests include the intersection of Rhetorical Structure Theory, Relational Propositions, Logic, and Knowledge Representation. His most recent publication is The rhetorical structure of modus tollens: An exploration in logic-mining, which can be found in the Proceedings of the Society for Computation in Linguistics for the year 2020.

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Veröffentlicht/Copyright: 27. Dezember 2021

Abstract

Rhetorical structure theory (RST) and relational propositions have been shown useful in analyzing texts as expressions in propositional logic. Because these expressions are systematically derived, they may be expected to model discursive reasoning as articulated in the text. If this is the case, it would follow that logical operations performed on the expressions would be reflected in the texts. In this paper the logic of relational propositions is used to demonstrate the applicability of transitive inference to discourse. Starting with a selection of RST analyses from the research literature, analyses of the logic of relational propositions are performed to identify their corresponding logical expressions and within each expression to identify the inference path implicit within the text. By eliminating intermediary relational propositions, transitivity is then used to progressively compress the expression. The resulting compressions are applied to the corresponding texts and their compressed RST analyses. The application of transitive inference to logical expressions results in abridged texts that are intuitively coherent and logically compatible with their originals. This indicates an underlying isomorphism between the inferential structure of logical expressions and discursive coherence, and it confirms that these expressions function as logical models of the text. Potential areas for application include knowledge representation, logic and argumentation, and RST validation.


Corresponding author: Andrew Potter, Department of Computer Science & Information Systems, University of North Alabama, 236 Keller Hall, 35632, Florence, AL, USA, E-mail:

About the author

Andrew Potter

Andrew Potter received his PhD in Information Science from Nova Southeastern University and is currently an Assistant Professor at the University of North Alabama. His research interests include the intersection of Rhetorical Structure Theory, Relational Propositions, Logic, and Knowledge Representation. His most recent publication is The rhetorical structure of modus tollens: An exploration in logic-mining, which can be found in the Proceedings of the Society for Computation in Linguistics for the year 2020.

  1. Research funding: Not applicable.

  2. Availability of data and material: Not applicable.

  3. Code availability: Not applicable.

  4. Competing interests: Not applicable.

Appendix: Source articles

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Received: 2020-12-29
Accepted: 2021-11-30
Published Online: 2021-12-27
Published in Print: 2023-07-26

© 2021 Walter de Gruyter GmbH, Berlin/Boston

Heruntergeladen am 28.9.2025 von https://www.degruyterbrill.com/document/doi/10.1515/text-2020-0230/html?lang=de
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