Reified input/output logic: Combining input/output logic and reification to represent norms coming from existing legislation

Abstract

In this article, we propose to combine Input/Output logic, a well-known formalism for normative reasoning, with the reification-based approach of Jerry R. Hobbs. The latter is a wide-coverage logic for Natural Language Semantics (NLS) able to handle a fairly large set of linguistic phenomena into a simple logical formalism. The result is a new framework that we will call ‘reified Input/Output logic’. This article represents the first step of a long-term research aiming at filling the gap between Input/Output logic and the richness of NLS. We plan in our future work to use reified Input/Output logic as the underlying formalism for applications in legal informatics to process and reason on existing legal texts, which are available in natural language only.