Effective representation and efficient management of indeterminate dates

Management of indeterminate temporal expressions is useful in a wide range of applications, from designing and querying temporal databases to knowledge representation and reasoning in artificial intelligence. In this paper, we focus on the representation and management of indeterminate dates, corresponding to a common use of temporal indeterminacy which can be found in (historical) texts written in natural language, as in expressions like: around 1624, near the end of the fourteenth century, etc. In this context, we adapt and improve the probabilistic approach designed for the TSQL2 language and further developed by Dyreson and Snodgrass, and show how it can be effectively and efficiently adopted for the management of indeterminate dates