Rule Responder is a Pragmatic Web infrastructure for distributed rule-based event processing multi-agent eco-systems. This allows specifying virtual organizations – with their shared and individual (semantic and pragmatic) contexts, decisions, and actions/events for rule-based collaboration between the distributed members. The (semi-)autonomous agents use rule engines and Semantic Web rules to ...

Intersentential elliptical utterances occur frequently during information-seeking dialogs in task domains. This paper presents a pragmatics-based framework for interpreting such utterances. Discourse expectations and focusing heuristics are used to facilitate recognition of an information-seeker's intent in uttering an elliptical fragment. The ellipsis is comprehended by identifying both the as...

In this paper, we explore the interaction between lexical semantics and pragmatics. We argue that linguistic processing is informationally encapsulated and utilises relatively simple ‘taxonomic’ lexical semantic knowledge. On this basis, defeasible lexical generalisations deliver defeasible parts of logical form. In contrast, pragmatic inference is openended and involves arbitrary real-world kn...

In recent years, researchers have focused on merging knowledge bases in both pragmatic and theoretical points of view. In this paper, we enumerate a few attempts to deal with inconsistencies while merging knowledge bases. We focus on ontology merging and show that pragmatic and theoretical approaches are not integrated and that both could benefit from a closer relationship. We extended an exist...

The service sector is extraordinarily heterogeneous. Since existing service classifications provide useful yet partial perspectives on this diversity, this paper reconciles and integrates distinct service taxonomies into a coherent and pragmatic typology which follows three dimensions: demand orientation, knowledge-intensity and technology-intensity. A regional analysis of services employment i...

This is the fourth round in my interchange with Barbara Held about the nature and role of objectivity and causality as they relate to the rationale for scientific and scholarly legitimacy of case study knowledge. Throughout, I have found Held’s critical responses to my views collegially delivered and very helpful in stimulating me to clarify and expand upon my own thinking. In this fourth and f...

Language in high-functioning autism is characterized by pragmatic and semantic deficits, and people with autism have a reduced tendency to integrate information. Because the left and right inferior frontal (LIF and RIF) regions are implicated with integration of speaker information, world knowledge, and semantic knowledge, we hypothesized that abnormal functioning of the LIF and RIF regions mig...

One of the key challenges that organizations face when trying to integrate knowledge across different functions is the need to overcome knowledge boundaries between team members. Such boundaries are associated with the different knowledge backgrounds of people from various disciplines and the various contexts and circumstances in which different organizational departments operate. In this resea...