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Skolemization

  • Alan Bundy
  • Lincoln Wallen
Chapter
Part of the Symbolic Computation book series (SYMBOLIC)

Abstract

A technique borrowed from mathematical logic (and named after the mathematician Skolem). but much used in automatic theorem proving, for removing quantifiers from predicate calculus <189> formulae. If A(y) is a formula with free variables y, x1, ..., xn then ∀y A(y) is replaced by A(y), and ∃y A(y) is replaced by A(f(x1,....,xn)), where f is a new Skolem function. The technique is usually applied to formulae which have all their quantifiers at the front (Prenex normal form), but can be adapted to any formula. It produces a formula which has a model if and only If the original formula does.

Keywords

Normal Form Binary Image Free Variable Theorem Prove Line Structure 
These keywords were added by machine and not by the authors. This process is experimental and the keywords may be updated as the learning algorithm improves.

Reference

  1. [Chang and Lee 73]
    Chang, C. and Lee, R. C. Symbolic Logic and Mechanical Theorem Proving. Academic Press. 1973.Google Scholar

Copyright information

© Springer-Verlag Berlin Heidelberg 1984

Authors and Affiliations

  • Alan Bundy
    • 1
  • Lincoln Wallen
  1. 1.Department of Artificial IntelligenceEdinburgh UniversityEdinburghScotland

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