A pure literal is a literal in a logic formula (usually in Conjunctive Normal Form) that occurs only positively or only negatively. The Davis-Putnam Procedure [l] was developed to find one solution to a logic formula, and it contains several techniques for speeding up the typical solution time. One of these techniques is the pure literal rule: a variable that occurs only positively or only nega...

Idiom comprehension of 15 patients with mild probable Alzheimer's disease was examined by means of a sentence-to-picture matching task. Patients had to choose between two pictures, one representing the figurative and the other the literal interpretation. They were also submitted to a literal sentence comprehension test and to a pencil-and-paper dual task. Whereas literal comprehension was norma...

Despite the impressive amount of evidence showing involvement of the sensorimotor systems in language processing, important questions remain unsolved among which the relationship between non-literal uses of language and sensorimotor activation. The literature did not yet provide a univocal answer on whether the comprehension of non-literal, abstract motion sentences engages the same neural netw...

Previous studies have suggested that formulaic and literal expressions are stored and processed according to differing characteristics, and that certain auditory–acoustic cues serve to distinguish formulaic from literal meanings. This study took these observations a step further by investigating listeners’ ability to discriminate between literal or idiomatic exemplars of ambiguous utterances an...

The simpliied pure literal algorithm solves satissability problems by c hoosing variables in a xed order and then generating subproblems for various values of the chosen variable. If some value satisses every relation that depends on the chosen variable, then only the subproblem for that preferred value is generated. Otherwise, a subproblem is generated for every value of the variable. The full...

Extended logic programs (ELPs) are a set of logic rules with strong negation  allowed in the bodies or head of the rules and weak negation ~ allowed in the bodies of the rules. ELPs enable for various forms of reasoning that cannot be achieved by definite logic programs. Answer Set Programming provides a widely acceptable semantics for ELPs. However, ELPs do not provide information regarding t...

We describe an algorithm for automatic classification of idiomatic and literal expressions. Our starting point is that idioms and literal expressions occur in different contexts. Idioms tend to violate cohesive ties in local contexts, while literals are expected to fit in. Our goal is to capture this intuition using a vector representation of words. We propose two approaches: (1) Compute inner ...

Higher levels of discourse processing evoke patterns of cognition and brain activation that extend beyond the literal comprehension of sentences. We used fMRI to examine brain activation patterns while 16 healthy participants read brief three-sentence stories that concluded with either a literal, metaphoric, or ironic sentence. The fMRI images acquired during the reading of the critical sentenc...

Web link analysis has been proven to provide significant enhancement to the precision of web search in practice. The PageRank algorithm, used in the Google Search Engine, plays an important role in improving the quality of results by employing an explicit hyperlink structure among the Web pages. The prestige of Web pages defined by PageRank is derived solely from surfers’ random walk on the Web...

Closed head injury (CHI) is associated with communication difficulties in everyday social interactions. Previous work has reported impaired comprehension of sarcasm, using sarcastic remarks where the intended meaning is the opposite of the sincere or literal meaning. Participants with CHI in the present study were assessed using two types of sarcastic items, those with a directly opposite meani...