Belief augmented frames

Abstract

This thesis presents Belief Augmented Frames, or BAFs. A BAF represents a concept or item in the world, and slot-value pairs represent relations between BAFs. Each BAF is assigned two belief masses. The Supporting Mass represents the degree in which the evidence supports the existence of the concept or object represented by the BAF. The Refuting Mass represents the degree in which the evidence refutes the existence of the concept or object. The novelty of BAFs comes from the independence between the Supporting and Refuting masses. This thesis suggests several sources for both masses. A logic system called BAF-Logic based on fuzzy-logic style min-max functions and Predicate Logic is also introduced to perform reasoning on BAF and their relations. Rigorous proofs are presented to show that the rules of Predicate Logic hold under BAF-Logic. The BAFs are applied to a discourse understanding and to a text classification.