Monotonicity

A system is monotonic if it grows without shrinking.

• Logic is monotonic because new facts cannot invalidate old conclusions. The same notion can be applied to various aspects of computing.
• Structures that are built up during the course of a computation are monotonic if new material added to them never invalidates what is there already.
• The variables of ordinary programming languages (eg. C, Java) are non-monotonic in the sense that assignment is destructive.
• By contrast, variables in Mathematics and Logic (and Logic programming languages) are monotonic since they always stand for a particular value which never changes.

 
• Monotonic Computations
• Why is Monotonicity Relevant to NLP
• Linguistic Forms delimit Interpretations