Paper

The Rhetorical Structure of Modus Tollens: An Exploration in Logic-Mining

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Abstract

A general method for mining discourse for occurrences of the rules of inference would be useful in a variety of natural language processing applications. The method described here has its roots in Rhetorical Structure Theory (RST). An RST analysis of a rule of inference can be used as an exemplar to produce a relational complex in the form of a nested relational proposition. This relational complex can be transformed into a logical expression using the logic of relational propositions. The expression can then be generalized as a logical signature for use in logic-mining discourse for instances of the rule. Generalized logical signatures reached in this manner appear to be grounded in identifiable logical relationships with their respective rules of inference. Thus, from a text, it is possible to identify a rhetorical structure, and from the structure, a relational proposition, and from the relational proposition, a generalized logical signature, and from the signature, the rule of inference residing within the text. The focus in this paper is on modus tollens and its variants, but the method is extensible to other rules as well.

Keywords: Rhetorical Structure Theory, RST, Relational Propositions, Propositional Logic, Inference, Logic Mining

How to Cite:

Potter, A., (2020) “The Rhetorical Structure of Modus Tollens: An Exploration in Logic-Mining”, Society for Computation in Linguistics 3(1), 170-179. doi: https://doi.org/10.7275/gbnv-2q84