Abduction in annotated logic programming

The author investigates techniques to make the logic programming paradigm more expressive for knowledge representation, while simultaneously retaining the computational advantages of efficiency and simplicity. He extends the annotated language of K. Thirunarayan and K. Kifer (1989) in various directions to obtain an enriched representation language. In particular, rule bodies are permitted to be a conjunction of literals, and the rules to be recursive. A class of annotated logic programs called the stratified programs is identified which can be given a unique supported minimal Herbrand model as their meaning. Abductive reasoning is integrated into this annotated logic framework. The notion of an explanation is formalized, and when an explanation can be regarded as acceptable is specified