A Reductive Semantics for Counting and Choice in Answer Set Programming

AAAI-08

Joohyung Lee, Vladimir Lifschitz, and Ravi Palla

In a recent paper, Ferraris, Lee and Lifschitz conjectured that the concept of a stable model of a first-order formula can be used to treat some answer set programming expressions as abbreviations. We follow up on that suggestion and introduce an answer set programming language that defines the meaning of counting and choice by reducing these constructs to first-order formulas. For the new language, the concept of a safe program is defined, and its semantic role is investigated. We compare the new language with the concept of a disjunctive program with aggregates introduced by Faber, Leone and Pfeifer, and discuss the possibility of implementing a fragment of the language by translating it into the input language of the answer set solver DLV. The language is also compared with cardinality constraint programs defined by Syrjanen.

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