---
title: "On the Declarative Semantics of Inheritance Networks"
authors:
  - "Krishnaprasad Thirunarayan"
  - "Michael Kifer"
  - "David Scott Warren"
doi: ""
url: "https://ijcai.org/proceedings/1989/176"
pdf: "https://ijcai.org/proceedings/1989/0176.pdf"
venue: "Proceedings of the Eleventh International Joint Conference on Artificial Intelligence"
year: 1989
pages: "1099-1102"
track: "Commonsense Reasoning"
keywords:
---

# On the Declarative Semantics of Inheritance Networks

Krishnaprasad Thirunarayan, Michael Kifer, David Scott Warren

*Proceedings of the Eleventh International Joint Conference on Artificial Intelligence*, pages 1099-1102.

## Abstract

Usually, semantics of inheritance networks is specified indirectly through a translation into one of the standard logical formalisms. Since such translation involves an algorithmic aspect, which is usually complex, these approaches to inheritance are not truly declarative. We provide a general framework for specifying a direct semantics of inheritance networks. Because the networks are not expressive enough to capture all intuitions behind inheritance, a number of significantly different semantics have been proposed. Our approach allows us to give direct semantics to a number of different proposals found in the literature, and clarifies the relationships among them. It also provides a yardstick for measuring adequacy oftranslation into logical formalisms of various intuitions about inheritance.