Temporal Situations and a Representation of Concurrent Events

Abstract

The representation of time with the physical time parameter 't', often overspecifies the semantics of natural languages, because we cannot always map their temporal property on the abstract time axis. In order to realize a more flexible time description, we extend temporal locations in situation theory to temporal situations which are defined as open sets in a topological space. With use of this concept, the relative distance of events and the relation between events are lucidly stated. As a main field of application of temporal situations, we choose the problem of concurrent courses of events that is difficult to represent in terms of conventional concept of time. In the first section we will discuss the problem of representation of time and situation theory, and in the following section we will formally define temporal situations. Thereafter we will apply this notion to the problem of course of events and concurrency, and we will consider to intertwine sequences on different time axes.