scholarly journals The complexity of first-order and monadic second-order logic revisited

2004 ◽  
Vol 130 (1-3) ◽  
pp. 3-31 ◽  
Author(s):  
Markus Frick ◽  
Martin Grohe
2004 ◽  
Vol 69 (1) ◽  
pp. 118-136 ◽  
Author(s):  
H. Jerome Keisler ◽  
Wafik Boulos Lotfallah

AbstractThis paper studies the expressive power that an extra first order quantifier adds to a fragment of monadic second order logic, extending the toolkit of Janin and Marcinkowski [JM01].We introduce an operation existsn (S) on properties S that says “there are n components having S”. We use this operation to show that under natural strictness conditions, adding a first order quantifier word u to the beginning of a prefix class V increases the expressive power monotonically in u. As a corollary, if the first order quantifiers are not already absorbed in V, then both the quantifier alternation hierarchy and the existential quantifier hierarchy in the positive first order closure of V are strict.We generalize and simplify methods from Marcinkowski [Mar99] to uncover limitations of the expressive power of an additional first order quantifier, and show that for a wide class of properties S, S cannot belong to the positive first order closure of a monadic prefix class W unless it already belongs to W.We introduce another operation alt(S) on properties which has the same relationship with the Circuit Value Problem as reach(S) (defined in [JM01]) has with the Directed Reachability Problem. We use alt(S) to show that Πn ⊈ FO(Σn), Σn ⊈ FO(∆n). and ∆n+1 ⊈ FOB(Σn), solving some open problems raised in [Mat98].


2016 ◽  
Vol 17 (4) ◽  
pp. 1-18 ◽  
Author(s):  
Michael Elberfeld ◽  
Martin Grohe ◽  
Till Tantau

10.29007/t28j ◽  
2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Loris D'Antoni ◽  
Margus Veanes

We extend weak monadic second-order logic of one successor (WS1S) to symbolic alphabets byallowing character predicates to range over decidable first order theories and not just finite alphabets.We call this extension symbolic WS1S (s-WS1S). We then propose two decision procedures for such alogic: 1) we use symbolic automata to extend the classic reduction from WS1S to finite automata toour symbolic logic setting; 2) we show that every s-WS1S formula can be reduced to a WS1S formulathat preserves satisfiability, at the price of an exponential blow-up.


2012 ◽  
Vol 7 ◽  
Author(s):  
Anders Søgaard ◽  
Søren Lind Kristiansen

Existing logic-based querying tools for dependency treebanks use first order logic or monadic second order logic. We introduce a very fast model checker based on hybrid logic with operators ↓, @ and A and show that it is much faster than an existing querying tool for dependency treebanks based on first order logic, and much faster than an existing general purpose hybrid logic model checker. The querying tool is made publicly available.


1999 ◽  
Vol Vol. 3 no. 3 ◽  
Author(s):  
Thomas Schwentick ◽  
Klaus Barthelmann

International audience Building on work of Gaifman [Gai82] it is shown that every first-order formula is logically equivalent to a formula of the form ∃ x_1,...,x_l, \forall y, φ where φ is r-local around y, i.e. quantification in φ is restricted to elements of the universe of distance at most r from y. \par From this and related normal forms, variants of the Ehrenfeucht game for first-order and existential monadic second-order logic are developed that restrict the possible strategies for the spoiler, one of the two players. This makes proofs of the existence of a winning strategy for the duplicator, the other player, easier and can thus simplify inexpressibility proofs. \par As another application, automata models are defined that have, on arbitrary classes of relational structures, exactly the expressive power of first-order logic and existential monadic second-order logic, respectively.


2017 ◽  
Vol 82 (1) ◽  
pp. 62-76 ◽  
Author(s):  
SILVIO GHILARDI ◽  
SAMUEL J. VAN GOOL

AbstractMonadic second order logic and linear temporal logic are two logical formalisms that can be used to describe classes of infinite words, i.e., first-order models based on the natural numbers with order, successor, and finitely many unary predicate symbols.Monadic second order logic over infinite words (S1S) can alternatively be described as a first-order logic interpreted in${\cal P}\left( \omega \right)$, the power set Boolean algebra of the natural numbers, equipped with modal operators for ‘initial’, ‘next’, and ‘future’ states. We prove that the first-order theory of this structure is the model companion of a class of algebras corresponding to a version of linear temporal logic (LTL) without until.The proof makes crucial use of two classical, nontrivial results from the literature, namely the completeness of LTL with respect to the natural numbers, and the correspondence between S1S-formulas and Büchi automata.


Author(s):  
Tim Button ◽  
Sean Walsh

In this chapter, the focus shifts from numbers to sets. Again, no first-order set theory can hope to get anywhere near categoricity, but Zermelo famously proved the quasi-categoricity of second-order set theory. As in the previous chapter, we must ask who is entitled to invoke full second-order logic. That question is as subtle as before, and raises the same problem for moderate modelists. However, the quasi-categorical nature of Zermelo's Theorem gives rise to some specific questions concerning the aims of axiomatic set theories. Given the status of Zermelo's Theorem in the philosophy of set theory, we include a stand-alone proof of this theorem. We also prove a similar quasi-categoricity for Scott-Potter set theory, a theory which axiomatises the idea of an arbitrary stage of the iterative hierarchy.


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