Narratives in the Situation Calculus

A narrative is a course of real events about which we might have incomplete information. Formalisms for reasoning about action may be broadly divided into those which are narrative-based, such as the Event Calculus of Kowalski and Sergot, and those which reason on the level of hypothetical sequences of actions, in particular the Situation Calculus. This paper bridges the gap between these types of formalism by supplying a technique for linking incomplete narrative descriptions to Situation Calculus domain formulae written in the usual style using a Result function. Particular attention is given to actions with duration and overlapping actions. By illuminating the relationship between these two diierent styles of representation, the paper moves us one step closer to a full understanding of the space of all possible formalisms for reasoning about action.