ITPerl is a web authoring tool that enables users to add temporal features to intensional web pages. ITPerl adds temporal macros to IPerl, a Perl interface to the C++ intense library. ITPerl combines temporal and default logic with intensional programming. ITPerl is an ideal solution for many time-sensitive and rapidly changing web applications. When developing a site, a user can add a temporal section to a webpage by providing different versions of it and associating each version with a time constraint. When a webpage is requested by a browser, a time point will be sent, as part of the request, to the ITPerl module. This time point is by default the current server time, but can be any time specified by the viewer. ITPerl will then compare the time point with each time constraint. If the time point satisfies more than one time constraint, then ITPerl will choose the best-fit version of the section by finding the most refined constraint. A html page that contains this best-fit version of this section will then be generated and sent back to the browser. ITPerl is easy to use. It provides the user with high level macros that have a simple syntax and that generate temporal codes as cgi files. This frees the user from having to write the complex temporal code himself.

The purpose of this dissertation is to develop a new generative grammar, based on the principles of intensional logic. More specifically, the goal is to create a psychologically real grammar model for use in natural language processing. The new grammar consists of a set of context-free rewrite rules tagged with intensional versions. Most generative grammars, such as transformational grammar, lexical functional-grammar and head-driven phrase structure grammar, extend traditional context-free grammars with a mechanism for dealing with contextual information, such as subcategorization of words and agreement between different phrasal elements. In these grammars there is not enough separation between the utterances of a language and the context in which they are uttered. Their models of language seem to assume that context is in some way encapsulated in the words of the language instead of the other way around. In intensional logic, the truth of a statement is considered in the context in which it is uttered, unlike traditional predicate logic in which truth is assigned in a vacuum, regardless of when or where it may have been stated. To date, the application of the principles of intensionality to natural languages has been confined to semantic theory. We remedy this by applying the ideas of intensional logic to syntactic context, resulting in intensional context-free grammar. Our grammar takes full advantage of the simplicity and elegance of context-free grammars while accounting for information that is beyond the sentence itself, in a realistic way. Sentence derivation is entirely encapsulated in the context of its utterance. In fact, for any particular context, the entire language of the grammar is encapsulated in that context. This is evidenced by our proof that the language of an intensional grammar is a set of context-free languages, indexed by context. To further support our claims we design and implement a small fragment of English using the grammar. The English grammar is capable of generating both passive and active sentences that include a subject, verb and up to two optional objects. Furthermore, we have implemented a partial French to English translation system that uses a single language dimension to initiate a translation. This allows us to include multiple languages in one grammar, unlike other systems which must separate the grammars of each language. This result has led this author to believe that we have created a grammar that is a viable candidate for a true Universal Grammar, far exceeding our initial goals. / Graduate / 0984 / 0800 / 0290 / rlittle@uvic.ca

This thesis presents TransLucid, a low-level, purely declarative, intensional programming language. Built on a simple algebra and with just a small number of primitives, TransLucid programs define arbitrary dimensional infinite data structures, which are then queried to produce results. The formal foundations of TransLucid come from the work in intensional logic by Montague and Scott. The background chapters give a history of intensional logic and its predecessors in the Western world, as well as a history of intensional programming and Lucid, the first intensional programming language. The semantics of TransLucid are fully specified in the form of operational semantics. Three levels of semantics are given, in increasing order of efficiency, with the sequential warehouse semantics, the most efficient, being presented together with a proof that any expression will be evaluated by only examining relevant dimensions in the current context. The language is then extended in three important ways, by adding versioned identifiers, (declarative) side-effects and timestamped equations and demands. Adding versioned identifiers to TransLucid enriches the expressiveness of the language and allows the encoding of a variety of programming paradigms, ranging from manipulating large data-cubes to pattern-matching. Adding side-effects supports one of the main reasons for TransLucid: namely, to provide a target language, together with a methodology, for translating the main programming paradigms, thus creating a uniform end platform that can be the focus for optimisation and program verification. A translation of imperative programs into TransLucid is given. Timestamped equations and demands enable TransLucid to become a language for synchronous programming in real-time systems, as well as allowing runtime updates to a program's equations. The language TransLucid represents a decisive advance in declarative programming. It has applications in many fields of computer science and opens up exciting new avenues of research.

This thesis presents TransLucid, a low-level, purely declarative, intensional programming language. Built on a simple algebra and with just a small number of primitives, TransLucid programs define arbitrary dimensional infinite data structures, which are then queried to produce results. The formal foundations of TransLucid come from the work in intensional logic by Montague and Scott. The background chapters give a history of intensional logic and its predecessors in the Western world, as well as a history of intensional programming and Lucid, the first intensional programming language. The semantics of TransLucid are fully specified in the form of operational semantics. Three levels of semantics are given, in increasing order of efficiency, with the sequential warehouse semantics, the most efficient, being presented together with a proof that any expression will be evaluated by only examining relevant dimensions in the current context. The language is then extended in three important ways, by adding versioned identifiers, (declarative) side-effects and timestamped equations and demands. Adding versioned identifiers to TransLucid enriches the expressiveness of the language and allows the encoding of a variety of programming paradigms, ranging from manipulating large data-cubes to pattern-matching. Adding side-effects supports one of the main reasons for TransLucid: namely, to provide a target language, together with a methodology, for translating the main programming paradigms, thus creating a uniform end platform that can be the focus for optimisation and program verification. A translation of imperative programs into TransLucid is given. Timestamped equations and demands enable TransLucid to become a language for synchronous programming in real-time systems, as well as allowing runtime updates to a program's equations. The language TransLucid represents a decisive advance in declarative programming. It has applications in many fields of computer science and opens up exciting new avenues of research.